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István Farkas, a lonely figure in Hungarian art, is generally referred to as a visionary painter. He painted this Self-portrait in 1932 in Paris. The painting is the meditative confession of someone trying to reconcile the conflict between a bourgeois upbringing and artistic self-realization. The painting reveals how the artist went beyond the search for order as exemplified by Cubism, thereby approaching the dreamworld of the Surrealists while never really leaving the reality of his own constricted, immediate surrounding. The pale, translucent colours reveal an extraordinary sensitivity, while artist's subjects expose his sense of seclusion. Behind the apparent tranquility of this self-portrait there is an inner tension which characterizes all of Farkas's remarkable oeuvre as well as his own death at Auschwitz.
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