Inner City #2

use contact page to request from Nyilasi Fine Art in

Hamilton, Canada

abstract design

Venetian Murano irma and smalti glass on wood board

24 x 36 inches

framed

Catalogue No: TNYIL-105

The glass and lays flat on the surface, creating a picture-like quality.

Description: This abstract closely reflects its own title. Nyilasi conveys a sense of claustrophobia and roughness with the dark, irregular vertical lines. As a person who grew up in a beautiful, pristine farming village in Hungary – close to lush mountains and always surrounded by nature – Nyilasi was struck by the different physical environment of the cities of Hamilton and Toronto after he reluctantly emigrated at the age of 20. Hamilton was industrial and called the “steel city”, while Toronto was huge, flat, and bleak. Nyilasi emigrated in 1957. In many of his watercolour compositions he explores the theme of the “inner city”. In this composition, the forked black line on the right suggests the remains of a dead tree. Another dead tree appears in the middle of the image. Nature is either neglected or destroyed in a city, and it is also affected by pollution. The horizontal black line at the top right suggests the formality of unimaginative city rooftops which press downward with a compressing effect. Earth tones in the lower half suggest the ground, while shades of blue and dull gray in the upper half suggest the city’s sky. Thus the viewer might see a “landscape” image within this abstract mosaic.

Nyilasi was drawn to the theme “the inner city” over the course of his career. However, it was not always approached negatively, as he had an optimistic and gregarious personality. Often he painted watercolours of engaged, active people in public squares or at street festivals. But he also explored the image of the solitary person feeling isolated in a compressing urban environment. This was subconsciously triggered by his earliest experiences as a refugee in Canada. At the age of 20, Nyilasi found himself physically weak after a difficult escape (he walked almost 200 km out of Hungary, and was constantly seasick on the refugee ship for 6 days), unable to speak the language, without friends, a peer group, or family.

Compositionally, the interplay of the formal placement of subtly tinted and regular-shaped smalti mosaic tiles with larger, informally-cut Irma tiles creates variety in the texture. The colours and colour tones strongly vary as well. This piece conveys a richness of artistic expression and the details draw in a viewer, so that person can enjoy “visually exploring” this mosaic by coming back to it with repeated viewings.