Sóváradi Valéria (Tárnok, 1950), a Munkácsy Prize–winning visual artist, represents a distinctive presence in contemporary Hungarian fine art. The exhibition Shadow weaver presents her latest oil paintings created between 2023 and 2025. The works continue the thematic direction of her earlier paintings, which are built on the contrast between light and shadow.

The paintings depict barren, homogeneous surfaces and walls illuminated by artificial light, permeated by an atmosphere of subtle anxiety. The illuminated details are emphasized, while their surroundings remain blurred, suggesting another hidden world. The interior and exterior spaces portrayed are not specific locations but rather convey a generalized urban experience. These simple, imagined architectural elements, details, and objects surround us, subtly alluding to human presence and scale, as well as to the stories concealed behind them.

Ultimately, the painting and graphic art of Sóváradi Valéria are rooted in a naturalistic, realist approach, yet her reflection and fragment of reality are uniquely nuanced by a playfully naïve and at times gently surreal vision. If we examine the components of her painting and drawing practice—after an early career phase that explored diverse creative fields, numerous art forms, and various techniques and materials—we encounter an extraordinarily purified, consciously reduced artistic universe guided by the spirit of classical ideals. In taking stock of this universe, we realize that our primary focus should not be on what appears in the paintings and drawings of Sóváradi Valéria, but rather on what is absent. Using very few means—just a handful of motifs evoking stark everyday life and barren environments, and a limited yet deeply intensified palette—her painting, along with her drawings interpreted through single lines or networks of lines that leave broad areas of paper untouched, becomes an art of absence. As we contemplate the painted and drawn world she presents, the painful deficiencies and threatening voids of that world unfold before us.

(Wehner Tibor, art historian)

Sóváradi Valéria graduated in 1978 from the Textile Design Department (Fashion Design specialization) of the Hungarian College of Applied Arts. Between 2000 and 2010, she taught as a lecturer at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design. Since 1997, she has focused on painting and printmaking; before that, she primarily created works on paper and autonomous textiles. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, received prestigious art awards, and, since 2023, has been a represented artist of Tobe Project.