Adalbert Erdeli

Adalbert Mikhailovich Erdeli was a Ukrainian painter and graphic artist, writer, public figure, teacher.

Born into the family of village teacher Mikhail Gryts in the Austro-Hungarian village of Kelemenfolvo, now it is Klimovitsa in the Irshavsky district of the Transcarpathian region of Ukraine. He had to change his surname in 1901 as a subject of Hungary. Having discovered the talent of his son, his father took care of his education.

Adalbert Erdeli was not only one of the founders of the Transcarpathian art school, but also the coryphaeus of the Ukrainian art of the 20th century in general. He was the founder, member and organizer of the Transcarpathian Union of Artists of Ukraine and its first chairman, and also became the first director of the newly opened Uzhgorod Art and Industrial School, where he taught until 1952. In Uzhhorod, a double monument to A. Erdeli and I. Bokshayu, the founding artists of the Transcarpathian school, was created; the Uzhhorod College of Arts at the Transcarpathian Art Institute was named after Erdeli.

Key ideas:

– Picturesque works by Adalbert Mikhailovich Erdeli captivate the viewer with a soft stream of light and color, the festive optimism of colors or unusual expression. Portraits, landscapes and still lifes are the favourite genres of the master.

– He worked in different techniques – the direction and texture of the smear can be both body-dense and watercolor translucent. The message of visual motives – the desire to display a holistic and harmony-filled world – is also important. No wonder the word “harmony” sounds more than once in the literary texts and articles of the artist. This is his key to understanding nature, objects and people – the entire environment. Despite the fact that art experts sometimes emphasize the artist’s emotionality, sometimes attributing one or another work to Expressionism, Erdeli does not have extreme tension, as there is no clearly marked destruction on forms.

– The master achieved the fusion of the depicted objects and space, in which they are placed, subordinating everything to one rhythm. As a result, small and great complement each other, which leads to the harmony desired by the author.

– You can grasp the mystery of the compositional skill of Erdeli thanks to the workbooks and albums of the artist. It seems that the fluent movement of the hand – be it a drawing-sepia or graphite sketch – fix the idea, which is not hidden behind the emotion of the colorful palette.

– Cezanne’s laws for the construction of the canvas are observed in painting and are even more palpable in the graphics of Adalbert Mikhailovich. At the same time, the Ukrainian master fills these “constructions” with poetics, soft exquisite-chamber intonations, obviously inspired by the nature of Prykarpattya, which the artist depicted with great love.