The following critics have also written about this artist: Gino Severini - Carlos Silva - Juan Carlos Palenzuela - Enrique Viloria Vera Axel Stein - Isaac Chocrón - Ida Gramcko - Sofía Imber - Rafael Pineda José Ratto Ciarlo - José Antonio Rial - Eduardo Robles Piquer - Efraín Subero Pascual Venegas Filardo - Louise Frost Truley - Figuerola Ferretti Sergio Antillano - Luis Felipe Vivanco - Emilio Santana - Clemente Cohen Lorenzo Batallan, Susana Benko, among others. Publications La Pintura de Ivan Petrovszky, Editorial Arte, 1979, Caracas Viaje Visual, Ivan Petrovszky, Ediciones Galería de Arte Nacional, 1982, Caracas El Pedestal con Grietas, Ivan Petrovszky, Academia de la Historia, 1988, Caracas La Ciudad Universo de Ivan Petrovszky, Editorial Ex Libris, 1999, Caracas.

Expression and Balance
Two essential aspects in the work of Ivan Petrovszky
By Susana Benko

Visiting a new exhibition of Ivan Petrovszky is a well-deserved homage to this Hungarian-Venezuelan artist. There is no doubt that Ivan is indefatigable and always has something to show.

Three years ago Galería Medicci assumed to show systematically the work of this wonderful painter.

Since his arrival in Venezuela in 1945, Ivan has had active participation in the plastic life of the Country. Right away he did shows and participated in exhibitions where he received applauses and acknowledgement by the critics. Since 1946 he has won the most important prizes: Michelena, Planchart, D'Empaire, the National Drawing Prize, etc., and even received for a second time, barely five years ago, the Great Prize of the Salon Arturo Michelena.

All those applauses are received by an artist that has been consequent with his plastic conception and interests. In general, his attitude is distant or foreign to fashionable groups and tendencies. Ivan has worked in solitary but at the same time integrated to the cultural context where he has had to live. He participates in exhibitions together with young artists without restraining himself because of his consecrated position or generational gap. His relation with art is that of a painter that assumes his craft basing his work on a permanent research of the plastic and expressive means, which has characterized his work along all these years.

The representation of a motive or scene in the street is for Ivan much more than the annotation of an anecdotic fact. It is the bridge that allows him to talk about the plastic problems. The theme is just a vehicle, a scaffold - as he himself describes it - to investigate the facts that arise his interest. Therefore, the themes repeat themselves and many times are the same.

But this resource allows him to act at a deeper level. At the present time Ivan is working essentially with water techniques on paper and, in the intimacy that these mean allows, he has gotten to go deeper in the richness of the color. Investigating with the complementary, he achieves "simonies of color" the combination of which were, until not long ago, unusual in his plastic production.

The space is conceived in connection with men. It is, as the artist says, … "about a homocentric space: man as the measure of man, only being capable of measuring". It is then, his composition instrument par excellence and the immediate reference that channels the proportions of the image created. It also is, in a way, the rational justification of his loneliness. Parting from this principle, he can compose groups: men working, sleeping, reading, playing chess, pregnant mothers or characters just enjoying a sun bath. They are all captured by that analytical look of the painter: … "I admit that constructiveness exists. There is a sculptor in me that has never expressed himself but through drawings and paintings".

The rational approach of the plastic creation allows him to "manipulate" the angles and the points of vision of his characters. With this "manipulation" he seeks the expressivity of the forms, which is what finally gives sensibility and beauty to the work, essential to his artistic condition. Such qualities are achieved through the atmospheres created by the charcoal, the textures resulting from the printed letters of the newspaper of the subtleness of the line of the fine pen. The expresivity of the line is combined many times with the tonal richness of the stain. With these resources it is intended the search for spontaneity, the synthesis, transparency, mobility and harmony of a drawing.

It works differently in painting since oil allows him to conceive figures and urban landscapes through planes of color with a more constructive approach. Whether it is the media -sketching or paint-, the essence of Ivan's work is the sensible control of the technique, getting to transcend pure manual vistuosism.

On the other hand, Ivan is an artist that knows when work is finished. He does not like details or excesses, although he accepts that the drawing should be impulsive. Because of such balanced attitude, he masters the technique. This mastering leads to spontaneity and expressiveness of the image.

"The technique -claims the artist- allows me to be above the emotional vicissitudes. Only this way one may pass on to formats of different sizes, change the materials and bases, etc." It means to have control of the expressive means in the hands in order to construct in every manner and variations his city-universe.

Susana Benko
Caracas, Venezuela
September 2000