Attila KONDOR, Hungary
Interior Library, 2024
Oil on canvas, 140x80cm
“When I received the request to create a new piece of art for this exhibition, I thought it had to be essentially an intellectual or spiritual self-portrait: about what we define as European identity.
Firstly, I visualize symbolic spaces, such as an antique colonnade, a cathedral, or a historical landscape garden. Any of them could evoke the layout of Europe. For me, however, the process of thinking is the most important, which can include poetry and metaphysics, literature and theology, natural science and classical philology, painting and music.
The library I painted is an “inner library”, a memory palace, which can be explored through the ancient technique of the Ars Memoriae – the art of memory. According to Plato, remembering is anamnesis, dispelling the fog of oblivion and ignorance. In other words, remembering is the contemplation of primordial knowledge.
In my Inner Library depicting the portrait of Europe, there are no bookshelves, because the books that are born from living thoughts are able to maintain themselves, and in addition to that, it is their connection to the spiritual world which upholds them. This imaginary library is beyond time, so this painting is only a vision of the real inner library that is beyond forms, and which contains all possible books.”
