Maria Darázs • Poetry in Colours

Her critics: Germans, French, Catalans and Hungarians have stated that the painting of Maria Darazs is "poetry in colours". She is a colourist who would not abandon forms in the name of the spirit of the age. The spirit of the age which abandons forms in nothing else but a lack of drawing skill, a confusion of space made virtue, in other words an alibi to cover up professional incompetence. In Maria Darazs´s opinion painting is a craft - and we share her view - that can be learned to a degree according to talent. Children can play with colours and lines, even a monkey can, but this is not art, no craft is art. To be an artist one needs commitment, expert knowledge, and aesthetic judgement. Maria Darazs possesses these three virtues. In addition to these she has high ranking professional attainment, from the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, and from the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.

Talent is a gift of God. The true artist feels that, and knows that, and her aim is creating positively. Maria Darazs´s painting, landscapes, compositions are restful. They are not bucolic copies but artistic representations of the beautiful. The world is not only ugly, and sad, but there are things lovely and merry, too. Even when Maria represents dissonance she does that beautifully.

It is not easy to categorise the art of Maria Darazs - it is difficult to do that with an outstanding artist. As it is already stated her main characteristic is colour richness. Her forms are expressed with colours, with reflections of light, and she shows mirror effects with the mixing of colours. For example: her sheens are unique among contemporaries, her pictures remind one of the impressionists - but this is only the first effect. Her art is not post-impressionistic but a new branch of colourist creation. She developed the traditions of "plain air" with making use of certain elements of expressionism. She creates selective synthetics out of the experience and effects of impressionists.

Within painting she avoids the graphical solutions. She does not colour the drawing, she does not use "mixed techniques". She does not "make" pictures. She is an artist. She avoids experimenting with fashion.

In her opinion the creation of the spirit is not a fashion article and the painter experiments only when his expertise and knowledge is incomplete.

Maria Darazs is not a sensationalist; her endeavour is to create paintings of quality. This means that her paintings are not sensational products just good ones. Their effect and value is lasting.



She was born on 12th July, 1934. After 1956, and because being a participant in it, she left Hungary. She is a wife and a mother of five children but still an active artist. She has had studios where she was teaching the young generation. Being a mother she only had a later chance to show her art. She reached her first success in France, and then critics of Germany, Austria, Holland and the USA acknowledged her art. Since 2001 the Hungarian landscapes have reappeared in her painting. After half a century she has returned as a European with her rich poetic painting - wherefrom she had to leave in the bloody autumn of 1956.

Imre Mate