Susana Benko

Having the pleasure of visiting a new exhibition of Ivan Petrovszky allows us to appreciate once again the quality of a work always consistent. A year ago at this same gallery, he exhibited many of his recent works titled Ivan Petrovszky -Time traveler. In those works it was evident his condition of artist-traveler and the sample turned out to be largely a reinterpretation of past experiences and situations which accounted for his intense plastic activity.

Petrovszky should be said again, takes images directly from the street, "notes them down" quickly and then he processes them in an analytical and disciplined way in his workshop. Then, he makes "variations on the same theme" that result from those sketched images reworked under different formal and technical points of view. We find the same men working, sleeping, reading or playing chess in a variety of plastic perspectives, likewise, some expectant mothers or those characters that enjoy a conversation, of a moment of rest or simply sun bathing.

The spontaneity of the note remains in the works in his workshop. They do not lose expressiveness, but on the contrary, they emphasize their beautiful work status while technically rigorous. Petrovszky studies color and shape in different ways, the structure and the volume, the texture and the transparency, among other elements of expression. He uses the same reasons, and yet each piece is unique. "In my work there is no imagination, but transformation," said the artist, which is partly just because a fact is transformed into a memorable work. However, imagination is evident in the pictorial richness itself: as creation is through the language of painting.

These considerations are valid for the exhibition now at hand. The exhibition consists of works on paper which selection is due to a wide criterion of heterogeneity in terms of themes, techniques and various formats. Also at different implementation periods, with a predominance of the most current.

The public can observe the reinterpretations produced by the transformations on the same pictorial motif. Transformations that result from decisions made by the artist in terms of techniques used and depth analysis he makes to shape and color. The result is more pictorial or drawing works, according to the use of oil or water-based paints.

This deepening leads to greater austerity, condensation and synthesis of form and the volume, for which is fundamental to consider the treatment given to color. The latter has a leading role in plastic development of the artist, who has not exactly stood out for "prolifically" managing color. On the contrary, what he has done on his production is to enrich the shades of a color. Petrovszky defines itself as an artist "oligo chromatic", a word derived from Greek meaning "with little chromatics 'and believes that the creative process done with few colors allows him to proceed with greater depth and capacity of synthesis. Thus, the color planes silhouette forms without details. Being flatter, they lose definition, and the image remains resonating in our perception as wrapped forms or made by a breath of color.

The analytical condition of each work does not alter the gracefulness that comes from them. There is an involving atmosphere, even in structural drawings as the ones in New York, for example. The fog, the sensitivity caused by its atmosphere, is expressed by means of subtle gradations of lights and shadows, interacting respectively with the solid and secure lines of the constructions and their progressive non-definition. In other drawings, the color is worked "symphonically" as the artist would say, polychromatic supplementing the analytical status of the work. In this sense, it could be concluded that the structural elements used by Petrovszky are closely related to the chromatic development of the work. Thus, the color planes establish important distinctions by the contrast of the directional lines or by the way they "cubic" the space in a composition.

Above all this, the drawing transparences significantly. Expressing himself in lines, in tone or color, he defines a landscape, a still life or the human being with their burden of loneliness. All the exhibited works confirm the conceptual clarity of what the drawing is for Master Ivan Petrovszky: the ultimate expression of his will to transcend the limits of figuration.

Caracas, Venezuela
Agosto del año 1999