My name is László Győri. I was born on 24 September 1944 in Fancsika, which belongs to Debrecen. In 1956, my father was run over and killed by a Soviet tank. My widowed mother raised me, my older brother and my younger sister.
In 1960, I passed the entrance examination for the Secondary School of Fine Arts in Budapest, but I was not offered a place in a student residence, so I could not begin the studies I had long desired.
In 1964, I graduated from the Mihály Péchy Technical School of Building in Debrecen. At first I worked as a site supervisor at the Debrecen Construction Company. After two years of military service, in 1965 I worked as a draughtsman at the Debrecen Design Company, and later as an architectural designer at the Debrecen office of Budapest-based SZÖVTERV. My designs for lightweight family houses won second and third prizes in architectural competitions. A department store and a cinema-café built to my designs in Balmazújváros received an award for excellence.
I live in Debrecen and have married twice. I had four children from my first marriage. After my first wife died, I remarried, and a daughter was born from my second marriage. We raised five children.
The secrets of sculpture were not passed on to me by masters: the era and the political system did not give me the opportunity to learn the foundations of the profession. I was my own master, with all the struggles and anguish that entailed. My Creator surrounded me with exceptional people and friends who helped me when I faltered. In this way I reached a level at which the profession accepted me. To obtain membership of the Art Fund, I had to produce a formal diploma work in a Budapest studio they designated. This brief detour along a difficult road did not divert me from my task. I continued on my own path, and I still follow it today. Sadly, dear friends have gradually disappeared from around me: Sándor Makoldi, a childhood friend and deeply knowledgeable master; the painters Tibor Cs. Uhrin and György Rácz; and Gábor Kovács, former director of the Cultural Centre in Hajdúszoboszló.
In 1981, I was admitted to MAOE. In 1992, I became a member of MIKSZ and the Hungarian Sculptors’ Society.
I regularly took part in exhibitions and artists’ colonies in Hungary and abroad. The spiritual and formal foundations of my work come from exploring and rethinking the organic cultural traditions of Hungary and the wider world. My significant early works therefore used sacred geometries: the circle, disc, square, triangle and spiral, in plastic, chromium steel, wood, bronze, acrylic glass and marble. Examples include House of Birth, Birth and Change (Metamorphosis), Spiral and Genesis: sculptural ensembles constructed from acrylic glass and plastic, mounted on kinetic pedestals.
An organic art group was active throughout Hungary. Its participants included the distinguished architects Imre Makovecz and György Csete, the organiser Zsolt Durkó, Sándor Makoldi, Péter Földi, and other painters and sculptors. We met on several occasions as practitioners of organic culture.
My first major solo exhibition celebrated my sixtieth birthday in 2004. It was followed in 2014 by my seventieth-birthday exhibition at the Kölcsey Centre, entitled Inscribed in Space. My eightieth-birthday exhibition, Profane and Sacred, was held in Hajdúszoboszló.
It was at the latter two exhibitions that I truly experienced how works made at different times could come together in a single space around a curatorial idea, strengthening one another despite the variety of materials.
Whenever I give form to a thought, I consider the harmonious unity of signs, emblems, symbols and colours essential. The beauty of our folk culture and our extraordinarily rich Hungarian language offers me an analogous source of guidance.
I close with Attila József’s words, ‘Measure yourself against the universe.’ For me, this means seeking to understand the great law of primordial creation, while remaining aware that completeness is beyond our grasp. Through my works, if they are capable of it, I hope to enrich the viewer intellectually and spiritually.