Budapest-based self-taught artist Gyula Szabó (in Hungarian – “Szabó Gyula”; born 1983) used to draw and paint a lot as a child but in the end, chose the technical field. Art came back into his life at the age of 26. “At that time,” he tells, “I often visited galleries and looked at many paintings. The pictures of Goya, Caravaggio and Alfred Kubin had quite an influence on me, but the works of Arthur Rimbaud, Albert Camus and Lubomyr Melnyk also gave great impetus. I was immersed in a lot of stuff – different kinds of visuals, literature and music. Ultimately, the canvas turned out to be the best outlet for my creative energies.”

Gyula’s body of work is made up of both outdoor and indoor scenes, real and fantastical. All are rich in earthy colours – browns, greys, greens. He says, “I mainly use these pigments because of the ‘life’ they contain, because they come directly from nature. These colours also help me to achieve a dramatic effect. I have tried a lot of paint, synthetic pigments are ‘dead’ for me, lacking the vibe, I cannot work with them.”

His paintings often convey feelings of loneliness, isolation, austerity, madness and sickness – reminding us of our inevitable mortality even as they spring from the fertile ground. But some manage to look mysteriously funny. Regarding the content, Gyula says: “I try to place the figures in the painting in such a way that there’s some place left in the background for an ‘invisible stranger’.”

Finally, how do Hungarian life and Hungarian culture inform his work? Gyula answers: “Historically, our leaders have betrayed us many times and this has led to a certain pessimism and mistrust in the people. The resulting melancholy and frustration have given birth to most of my pictures.”

Gyula’s website (szabogyula.com) is currently under construction. You can check his Saatchi Art page (www.saatchiart.com/szabogyula). The featured image above is called “Glass-eyed Joe: The Megalomaniac”. Other works below: