- Mar 26

Angelika Tóth

Angelika Tóth has exhibited extensively in Hungary, Germany, and internationally in the United States, Canada, China, and the United Kingdom. To date she has had almost 20 solo exhibitions and has received grants from institutions such as the Derkovits foundation and Hungary Academy of Arts. Recent prizes include an award of excellence by the Hungarian Minister of Defence and Renaissance competition award from Ignác Tragor Museum. She has participated in notable art fairs such as Art Expo New York and Red Dot Miami. Angelika is mostly a figurative oil painter who also sometimes works in ink, watercolor, pastels, and acrylics.

In an interview to ArtGallery73, Angelika describes in her own words to “focus on your painting with all your self-discipline and attention, and use only the last couple of minutes to make the perfect line to create the perfect painting”. Such a philosophy of attention to detail remains evident in Angelika’s work as she regards the finishing touches as essential to the completion and holistic approach to a painting. Her expressive technical skill comes from an artist who uses and appreciates extensive artistic training and course work from Miskolc University, the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, and Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera.

The paintings are often semi-colorful infusing a mix of bright colors with earthy tones and complex compositions sometimes containing several figures or compounded scenery. Angelika’s distinctive feature remains the blocking of form as she breaks down subject matter down to geometric shapes of line, shadow, light, and hue. The configuration of slabs of paint are broken down to every note of naturalistic observation, often applied with such ferocity of erratic brushwork. Dilapidated structures of shapes are strategically pieced together to create a comprehensive painting which sometimes borders on total abstraction.

Observing the painting at the top of the article titled Summer Afternoon we may take in the overwhelming colored formation. The painting conveys figures reconfigured to just 5 colors: cerulean blue, Naples yellow, yellow ochre, viridian green, and white. At first glance the painting comes off as a total abstraction and may take the viewer 2 to 3 seconds to realize the naturalistic tendencies. Angelika breaks down the figures to just forms of their hair, clothing, and shadows of facial features. The central figures are streamlined to the point of lacking interpretation of their gender. The participants collectively focus their gaze completely off the canvas to the left almost as if directed towards the arms of the abstracted figure to the edge. They appear concerned or curious about the focal point as the direction of heads and alignment of eyes create a strict triangular composition. Angelika’s well orchestrated painting comes off like a classical symphony precisely directed by the conductor.

Many of her paintings can come off as Rubenesque, not in portrayals of robust women, but rather in vulgarity and excessive expressions of human form. Peace (pictured above) remains one such example where the abundance of fleshy tones seeps from the figures and into the background. The painting captures intense highlights of flesh as contained in many of the paintings of Peter Paul Rubens. The surroundings have turned into a whirlwind of painterly abstraction leaving only hints of nature but unable to confirm such observations. A delicious painting of form, color, brushwork, and passionate composition.

Angelika Tóth bridges the divide between classical, academic, modernistic, and contemporary painting techniques and application. She leaves us with lush, energetic paintings not in what is portrayed but how the subject becomes defined through crumbling forms and contours which hint of shadow and light. The art brings upon us a state of consciousness reflecting the nature of painting as a vehicle for discovery, nuance, and engineered structure of human form. Angelika’s imagery remains powerful, vigorous; capturing a sense of force and essence of life.