“I know that art can change lives–it changed mine – and I hope that art can change the world too.” (Vincent Namatjira)
István Kulinyi was born in Innsbruck in 1945. Between 1968 and 1973, he pursued his studies at the College of Applied Arts, which at that time was more liberal than the University of Fine Arts. Closer to the Bauhaus philosophy, the school’s educational approach allowed for the comprehensive and universal interpretation of creative activities, allowing István Kulinyi to grow into a versatile and experimental artist who is sensitive to and reflects on world phenomena, identifies problems, and seeks solutions.
His exhibition focuses on his autonomous works of art, which demonstrate the breadth and depth of his entire graphic and design skills. The exhibition features works that, like a diary, reflect on the social and existential phenomena of the past 4-5 years: paintings, digital works, photos, as well as earlier pieces from his oeuvre, which are placed in a dialog with their contemporary successors.
István Kulinyi’s works are often panel paintings that he created digitally or by hand, combining formal aspects of figurative, lyrical abstraction, and expressive gesture painting. He typically thinks in cycles because he believes in variation as a method of creative thinking, as well as in the problem-solving power of repeating the essence in new forms, arrangements, and other means.
His career highlights include games, professional publications, and graphic and architectural designs, such as the massive steel heads in front of the former Pannon GSM building and the mural design for the façade of the Hungarian Museum of Architecture. He is also associated with a series of illustrations for the Kempinski Hotel brand and a poster commemorating Liszt’s centenary in 1986. He received the Munkácsy Prize in 1994, the Meritorious Artist of Hungary award in 2020, and the National Association of Hungarian Artists (MAOE) Lifetime Achievement Award in 2006.
In addition to his work as a designer, István Kulinyi also engaged in public art and social projects to improve the community, such as founding Artplay, a creative community dedicated to developing creativity-shaping visual arts games, and the Hungarian Design Cultural Foundation, which had a broader program. At the same time, his daily autonomous and experimental practice encompasses the representation of reality through photography, video, or lyricism, often expressed as a written projection of his images.
Kulinyi has always been concerned with the cause and effect of dramatic events that decisively impact the world. The component that influences events and transforms individual moral human decisions into fate and phenomena that either benefit humanity or lead to its destruction. In his youth, it was the 1969 moon landing, later the 9/11 terrorist attack, and more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, and the war.
The material of his current jubilee exhibition organized in the Műcsarnok also presents him as an extremely sensitive sensor of the worsening reality, as a seismograph that leaves a mark, whose visionary, life-affirming images speak for sustaining hope, always with unbroken faith.