Watch and Listen


Les Huns ou Surgissement d'une horde sauvage, différent d'une armée qui est organisée by Judit Reigl

As early as 1959, Judit Reigl explored a new process of creation with her Écritures en masse. Represented by this canvas dating from 1964, the series evokes the technique of automatic writing with large and powerful lines, where the paint is placed in clumps on the canvas. The forms are born from the automatism of the gesture and take shape in the material. Through this, the artist expresses the powerful energy that drives her, akin to the forces that govern the Universe.

Judit REIGL
Les Huns or Surgissement d'une horde sauvage, différent d'une armée qui est organisée [The Huns or Emergence of a wild horde, different from an organized army]
Écriture en masse
Series
1964
Oil on canvas
207.5 x 230.5 cm
FGA-BA-REIGL-0005

Narrated by Adelina Lafontaine, assistant curator Fine Arts Collection

Painted by Judit Reigl in 1964, this canvas perfectly illustrates the prowess with which the Hungarian artist transcends the matter, drawing on her experience of automatic writing. On a white background, Reigl spreads powerful black forms with a flexible steel blade, always moving from the bottom to the top, so as to give the impression that the paint has run upwards.

The artist breaks with tradition by providing this piece with a title. Les Huns or Surgissement d'une horde sauvage, différent d'une armée qui est organisée (The Huns or Emergence of a wild horde, different from an organized army) refers to the Huns, the nomadic warriors of Central Asia who devastated Europe. It also refers to Max Ernst’s series entitled The Horde: paintings offering a nightmarish vision of an army of animal figures, advancing with a frantic momentum. Furthermore, the title is an allusion to Judit Reigl’s personal history, evoking the arrival of Soviet troops in Budapest in 1956 and the abuses they inflicted on the local population.

Letting her unconscious guide her hand, the artist, in the manner of a shaman, transforms the worries arising from the torments and intensity of her own life into a cosmic definition