Wall-Hanging with Tombstone Forms (Tapestry)
Ilona Keserü Hungarian
Not on view
Keserü belongs to a generation of Hungarian artists that emerged in the wake of the Revolution of 1956, which had resulted in restrictions on officially acceptable art and suspicion of avant-garde art produced in Western styles—particularly abstraction. Keserü and other Hungarian artists flourished in abstract modes despite this marginalization. A vibrant unframed tapestry, Wall-Hanging exemplifies her desire to merge modern abstraction with references to Hungarian folk culture, making something with local resonance out of an otherwise international vocabulary of hard-edge painting. The undulating toothlike motif recurring throughout the composition relates to the artist’s study of gravestones at the Balatonudvari Cemetery, southwest of Budapest.