The Art of István Sándorfi
István Sándorfi was born in 1948 in Budapest, Hungary. From the age of ten he lived in Paris, where he studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs. Sandorfi died in December, 2007.
Sándorfi’s paintings are fascinating in their ‘unfinished’ states. Their beauty not only lies in their realism, but in the manner in which they appear imperfect. Phantasmal imagery and bleeding paint come alive in his works of seemingly mundane events. Sandorfi’s painting style blends a meticulous realistic technique with elements of surrealism. His work has been featured for the past three decades in important European galleries including Isy Brachot, Brussels. His provocative draped figures and still lifes appear in important private collections and museums on several continents, notably Centre Georges Pompidou, Musee de la Ville de Paris, Kunsthalle in Nuremberg, and the Taiwan Museum of Art, among others. A show at the Arnot Museum in upstate New York featured two of his recent paintings. Art Fairs at which his works have been exhibited include FIAC, Basel, Ghent, Art Miami, ArtFair Seattle, and New York’s International 20th Century Arts Fair.
He preferred to paint at night, but each day goes to bed later than the day before, thus living in a perpetual time lag, which sidelines him from any social life. Sandorfi reconciles this isolation with his family circle (he is the father of two girls, Ange and Eve) and his emotional life, thereby maintaining a delicate and studied balance between his life and his work.
“I never had the impression that I really knew how to paint, not in the past, not now. If you paint, you are simply never satisfied.” ~ István Sándorfi
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