Elemér Soltra
Festőművész / Painter
Biography
He was born in 1922 in the village of Jákó, where his father was a teacher. His artistic talent was discovered by the painter Antal Neogrády, who owned the Jákó estate. He completed the first three grades of secondary school in Kaposvár, then graduated from the secondary school in Csurgó. He started at the College of Fine Arts in 1941, where László Kandó was his leading teacher. In 1943 he was called up as a soldier and became a prisoner of war, from which he was released in 1946. He graduated from the College of Fine Arts in 1948. He taught in Kaposvár and moved to Pécs in 1951. He taught at the Teacher Training College from 1952 to 1957, but was removed from the college because of his activities in 1956. From 1957 to 1966 he was a teacher at the Löwey High School, then he returned to the Teacher Training College, where he was head of department from 1972 to 1982, until his retirement.
The early period of his artistic oeuvre was marked by socialist realism, and painted many pictures with a mining theme. In 1956, together with the artist Emil Gábor. he painted the fresco of the primary school in Meszes. In 1961, he created figural mosaic works entitled “Literature” and “Musicians” in the Uránváros Bachelor Hostel in Pécs.Elemér Soltra’s abstract painting is the product of a short period in his life, from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. At the time of their sporadic, occasional presentation, the concentrated power of these works was weakened rather than enhanced by the multi-directional artistic work of the artist in whose context they appeared. The socialist realist and realist drawings, watercolours, etchings, frescoes, mosaics and paintings, and later the coins and plaques that were to be given the greatest emphasis while they may have been indicative of the technically qualitative versatility of his artistic creativity, in fact dispersed the high quality energy of his abstract paintings, wich, together with his profession as a teacher of painting, adapting all stylistic trends,could be distinguished as independent from his oeuvre.the possibility and main inspiration for Soltra’s abstract paintings- as for his colleague János Bizse- was the influence of Ferenc Martyn, which is directly reflected in the Stone and Water series, where the static and dynamic counterpoints of the stain painting, which imitates motifs from nature, refer to the master who composed with biomorphic shapes. The Constructivist works in the Road Drawings series. also harking back to Martyn, are harmonious states of equilibrium in which the hard edges of geometric elements are painterly softened by static compositions of form and colour. The most significant, autonomous pieces of Soltra’s abstract art- a life’s work that could have been internationally recognised as unfinished- are paintings based on the dramatic contrast of black and white light colours in which we see catastrophic moments of motifs stacked, compressed, crumpled and compacted. Here abstraction understands itself as deconstruction, as a ‘breaking up’ of form, and instead of the prolonged, drawn-out long duration of the constructive images, we see the epiphany of brief flashes.After 1972 he only painted sporadically, occasionally. In 1973 he became a member of the Pécs Graphic Workshop, where he created some abstract etching of a significant artistic quality, almost unique in Hungarian art, in the formal framework of the deconstructive genre based on the above-mentioned dramatic contrasts. This part of his oeuvre, like his abstract painting, was unfortunately interrupted. He then turned his interest to medals. In 1982, his book The Teaching of Drawing was published by the National Textbook Publishing House, and was awarded the Academy of Sciences Prize and the Publishing Prize of Excellence.
The early period of his artistic oeuvre was marked by socialist realism, and painted many pictures with a mining theme. In 1956, together with the artist Emil Gábor. he painted the fresco of the primary school in Meszes. In 1961, he created figural mosaic works entitled “Literature” and “Musicians” in the Uránváros Bachelor Hostel in Pécs.Elemér Soltra’s abstract painting is the product of a short period in his life, from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. At the time of their sporadic, occasional presentation, the concentrated power of these works was weakened rather than enhanced by the multi-directional artistic work of the artist in whose context they appeared. The socialist realist and realist drawings, watercolours, etchings, frescoes, mosaics and paintings, and later the coins and plaques that were to be given the greatest emphasis while they may have been indicative of the technically qualitative versatility of his artistic creativity, in fact dispersed the high quality energy of his abstract paintings, wich, together with his profession as a teacher of painting, adapting all stylistic trends,could be distinguished as independent from his oeuvre.the possibility and main inspiration for Soltra’s abstract paintings- as for his colleague János Bizse- was the influence of Ferenc Martyn, which is directly reflected in the Stone and Water series, where the static and dynamic counterpoints of the stain painting, which imitates motifs from nature, refer to the master who composed with biomorphic shapes. The Constructivist works in the Road Drawings series. also harking back to Martyn, are harmonious states of equilibrium in which the hard edges of geometric elements are painterly softened by static compositions of form and colour. The most significant, autonomous pieces of Soltra’s abstract art- a life’s work that could have been internationally recognised as unfinished- are paintings based on the dramatic contrast of black and white light colours in which we see catastrophic moments of motifs stacked, compressed, crumpled and compacted. Here abstraction understands itself as deconstruction, as a ‘breaking up’ of form, and instead of the prolonged, drawn-out long duration of the constructive images, we see the epiphany of brief flashes.After 1972 he only painted sporadically, occasionally. In 1973 he became a member of the Pécs Graphic Workshop, where he created some abstract etching of a significant artistic quality, almost unique in Hungarian art, in the formal framework of the deconstructive genre based on the above-mentioned dramatic contrasts. This part of his oeuvre, like his abstract painting, was unfortunately interrupted. He then turned his interest to medals. In 1982, his book The Teaching of Drawing was published by the National Textbook Publishing House, and was awarded the Academy of Sciences Prize and the Publishing Prize of Excellence.