Miklos Bokor

Born in Budapest in 1927, Miklos Bokor was deported to Auschwitz and Buchenwald in 1944. “Something happened in Auschwitz that lurks in society like a gap, a wound that does not heal,” says Bokor. Returning from the dead, the one who has lived in his flesh and in his spirit the experience of dehumanization begins to paint the unspeakable.

“I think before and after, but when I paint, I don't think. I do not make any decision, it is after that I see: so it was that. And if I did otherwise, if I let my will decide, it would result in failure. One must abdicate from oneself, abdicate from wanting everything; to make oneself open, available, to be only a sounding board. "

Bokor then paints very large canvases dominated by earthy colors, from which disturbing silhouettes seem to emerge, with gazeless faces.

But on each canvas, the aesthetic of pain is crossed by the vital energy of these human figures who, in a movement of march, fight, flight or plea, never stop shouting their will to to exist.

"Open bodies detach themselves from their destiny, forget their fragments of History, their wavering remains terrible but their surrounding environment is only melancholy", describes Alain Tapié.

Many poets and critics have written about Bokor's work. Among them: Yves Bonnefoy, Georges Duthuit, John E. Jackson, François Chapon, Philippe Dagen, ...