Dóra Maurer’s “Light-grammar” workshop, 1987-1988

Dóra Maurer’s “Light-grammar” workshop, 1987-1988

Dóra Maurer’s pedagogical work played a significant role in her body of work. She experimented with various creative techniques with her students, including leading a photogram course between 1987 and 1988, attended by Balázs Czeizel, Ágnes Eperjesi, Teodóra Hübner, György Jederán and Csaba Zsuffa. Collaborating in the “Visual Experiments” sessions held at the Hungarian Academy of Applied Arts, they often created their photograms together, reflecting on each other’s works, which are the focus of the exhibition. Maurer’s teaching concept was to develop “the alphabet, the encyclopedia” of photograms, systematically focusing on the creative elements of image production. The exhibition presents the works of Maurer’s students, Czeizel, Eperjesi, Hübner, and Jederán, according to various experimental methods: the effects of light, objects, photosensitive surfaces, chemicals, and the acts of movement and color transformed into photograms. They frequently combined technical procedures, resulting in genre inventions such as “chemophotogram” or “photofrottage,” of which the exhibition presents numerous examples.

“The power of the photogram lies in its authenticity, leaving traces of objects in their original size,” summarizes Ágnes Eperjesi the unique value of the technique to László Beke in an interview published in their 1988 Photogrammatics catalogue, also displayed on one of the main walls of the exhibition. One hundred and two years have passed since the advent of the most popular experimental branch of photography initiated by the achievements of László Moholy-Nagy or Man Ray in light modulation, distinguished by the fact that the creator does not require a camera, only a sensitive photographic paper. The photogram, a trace of light, is an image created from the combination of chemical and optical phenomena, where “the light source and the viewpoint are identical” (Maurer).

Dóra Maurer’s workshop on “Photogrammatics”, or as András Forgách called it, “Light-grammar”, has led her former students to defining experiences, and they still heed their master’s words today.

Our exhibition aims to pay tribute and express gratitude to Dóra Maurer, founder of the OSAS artist group who celebrates her eighty-seventh birthday this June, and is the most important partner of our Museum. Her exhibited photographs and photograms are important pieces of her oeuvre, while significantly fewer in number than her paintings and graphic works, and are the precursors of the experiments she taught in her course.

Exhibiting artists: Dóra Maurer, Balázs Czeizel, Ágnes Eperjesi, Teodóra Hübner és György Jederán

Curators: Balázs Czeizel, Veronika Pócs