József Csató

József Csató is an irresistible figure on the contemporary Hungarian art scene. He is known mostly for his large paintings, although he also deals with sculpture and installation art. Since the start of his career, his work has been defined by the sensitive medium of paper. The point of departure for his paintings comes in the form of drawings, with which he formulates his ideas in notebooks, like the one you are holding in your hands. These could also be called preliminary studies, the initial stages of his creative process, whose motifs and colour experiments give rise to the compositions in the large-scale paintings of the subsequent phase.

The series he produced for Notess is essentially a compendium of Csató’s typical motifs, perched on the boundary between the abstract and the figural; among them we may recognise floral ornaments, human figures, body parts, eyes, various objects, fountains, vases and bones, all generated under neo-primitive, modernist and cubist influences. His drawing-filled notebooks metamorphose into wonderful artist’s books, a visual cavalcade bursting with all his characteristically coloured, interweaving figures and forms.