Franck Derex, French painter: In memory of Istvan Szajko @istvanszajkoartist

There are men we do not believe to be mortal, so much does their genius bestow a sense of eternity upon daily life. And yet, the Hungarian Claude Monet has left us. His studio was his garden; there, he cultivated an ineffable joy – and a question. The question of being, as Heidegger might have said, posed in a world forgetful and overwhelmed by technology and bombs. Istvan departed while the world exploded (in darkness), he who depicted it as airy, celestial, full of light.

The illogic (the absurdity) of existence did not surprise its greatest portraitist and pastel artist, who translated its strangeness, who took joy in amplifying light, dismantling reflections, and misleading shadows. Olive greens, burnt yellows, oranges squeezed by sea greens – in the vicinity of enigmatic or abandoned bicycles, pigeons, fish, spices, silhouettes emerging from nothingness, wandering leaves, deserted places where ghosts cross paths in distant, sunlit mists and phosphorescences.

It is the universe of a newborn’s astonishment, transfixed by his own tiny feet, which he will come to claim as his own, just like the organic flow of happenings – and which he will later use, as he grows old, on the roads of the world, where he will pass bicycles on his way to an elsewhere that will resemble his beginning: undifferentiated.

In any case, we should all take part by never ceasing to speak of Istvan.

Never forget: death survives by taking life after life – it feeds on it; it is hard to kill, and even eternal, lasting longer than itself, an endless concession to the grave.

To contradict it, we must offer eternal admiration.

You have mine, Istvan.