Galambos, Tamas (Bridgeman Studio)

Creator details

Name
Galambos, Tamas
Nationality
Hungarian
Biography
Tamas Galambos, born in 1939, is of a Hungarian artist generation whose creativity in youth was largely affected by looming controls of a dictatorship. His work is awaiting thorough (re)discovery, even if during the politically mellowing 1980's his versatile outsider art began gaining recognition home and abroad. He is a multifaceted creator, with various categories and detours within his ouvre. His idiosyncratic nature-paintings, sometimes reminiscent of large canvases richly woven across with the brush, represent his magical realism. This virtuoso, intentionally pseudo-naïve folkloristic technique meant a ‘politically correct’ opportunity for him to exhibit from the late 1970’s, avoiding the censorship of Soviet-controlled Hungarian authorities. Meanwhile, his paintings bearing social criticism could not be exhibited before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. These political images were mainly painted in a pop-art imbued vein, a unique style for the Eastern Bloc. Besides his images on nature and his political commentary, his traditionalism-informed works also constitute a significant category, with themes of mythology and religion as focal points. These images often display skills of a Gothic icon painter, the latter style being a major influence on the artist from the 1960’s onward. Irrespective of the theme category, his pictures are seldom short of a tinge of irony. Thereby he makes a point of addressing the common baseness in human nature, be it an elusive animal portrait of sarcastic self-personification, a composition of wry political symbolism or a daredevil’s attack on middle-class prudery.

Assets (113 in total)

Adam and Eve, the Last Couple, 1979 (oil on canvas)
Blue Owl, 1995 (print)
Peacock with Locusts, 1989
The Fall of Jericho, 1996
Vegetation
The Tower of Babel, 1985 (oil on canvas)
The Peacock
Judas' Kiss
Summer, 1981 (oil on canvas)
Big Chameleon, 1997
Crossing the Red Sea
Long-eared Owl, 1996

Back to top