Ágnes Uray-Szépfalvi
1965, Budapest
Ágnes Uray-Szépfalvi’s art is centered around the observation of the dynamics of female existence and the relationships between women and men—opposing yet complementary forces. The main subjects of her paintings are often women, portrayed in various traditional or unusual, exotic roles: as a girlfriend, fiancée, lion tamer, lover, seductress, and mother. She depicts archetypal situations and scenes, drawing much of her inspiration from the visual world of popular culture. She often works from movie stills, reinterpreting them in her own distinctive style, occasionally modifying certain details of the original images.
In her compositions and use of painterly techniques, Uray-Szépfalvi intentionally evokes the traditions of 17th- and 18th-century academic painting, while also referencing portraiture and the iconography of biblical and sacred themes. Her works depict a wide spectrum of emotions and desires – ranging from the grandiosity of pathos to the subtlety of delicate emotional nuances. The often ambiguous facial expressions, exaggerated gestures, and sometimes unsettling imagery in her paintings challenge or even question traditional gender role stereotypes.
Among the prominent works of Hungarian contemporary art in the 1990s are the storyboards she created in collaboration with Csaba Nemes. These graphic series, inspired by the genre used in filmmaking, incorporate textual elements and employ the experimental attitude and montage techniques of new-wave cinema. The series address the social issues of their time, sometimes with a dramatic, at other times with an ironic tone. A key theme in Uray-Szépfalvi’s work is the question of identity, highlighted in her 1995 role-playing project, where she adopted the mysterious, fictional character of Monique L. to reflect on various aspects of artistic authenticity, authorship, and social and artistic roles.
Recently, her work has focused more on the philosophy of ‘bad drawings’ and the artistic ideal of sprezzatura (deliberate, studied carelessness). In her drawings and paintings – whether cat sketches, child portraits, or sunsets by Lake Balaton – the intentionally simple or seemingly effortless solutions transform into expressions of creative freedom, joy, playfulness, and the relinquishment of the struggle for perfection. As she herself expressed: ‘I want to paint the triumph of existence. I long for freedom: for light and brilliance!’
Ágnes Uray-Szépfalvi graduated in 1990 from the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts. In 1999, she participated in the After the Wall exhibition at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, which featured artists from Eastern Europe, and in 2006, she took part in the major figurative exhibition Zurück zur Figur at the Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung in Munich. The Ludwig Museum in Budapest held a solo exhibition of her work in 2003. Her paintings are part of the collections of the Moderna Museet, the National Museum of Art in Osaka, and the Michael Ringier collection, as well as of numerous private collections in Hungary and Germany. Uray-Szépfalvi has received several prestigious awards, including the City of Bonn Scholarship in 1998, the Derkovits Scholarship from 1999 to 2002, the Smohay Award in 2000, the Galyasi Miklós Prize in 2022, and in 2003, she was awarded a fellowship at the Hungarian Academy in Rome. In 2024, she received the Munkácsy Prize.
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