The primary task of the Gábor Karátson Archive and Research Project is to manage and maintain the material and intellectual legacy of Gábor Karátson and to make it available for research. The Archive is committed to providing as comprehensive an overview as possible of the artist’s multifaceted work, presenting his philosophy of life, and disseminating knowledge drawing on the results of comprehensive research activities. Our goal is to preserve a personal remembrance of Gábor Karátson and to pass it on to future generations in all its complexity.
Our tasks include researching Gábor Karátson’s oeuvre, publishing his writings, and curating exhibitions of his paintings and graphics. Studies written by one of our senior colleagues, Gábor Bellák, explore the principal phases in Gábor Karátson’s career as an artist.
“Words that took time for myself and took many decades of work to make clear to me, at least for me, painting, poetry and writing, the translation of Chinese philosophers in my case is the same field of work – the same piece of work”– writes Gábor Karátson in his autobiography.
The most important tasks related to the artist’s rich literary legacy are processing, recording, and publishing. Research has begun in the Archive to supplement and complete the bibliographies known so far.
As a painter and graphic artist, Gábor Karátson left a serious oeuvre, and his artistic writings are also significant. His pictures and illustrations were characterized by a unique vision, careful execution, and last but not least, experimentation with various materials. According to our plans, Gábor Karátson ‘s oeuvre will be processed by a complete catalog of his paintings and graphics, supplemented by commentaries on his own works. The Archive builds a database of legacy material that also contains a wealth of data on works of art.
One of the important chapters of Gábor Karátson’s oeuvre was the study, translation and commentary of East Asian art and classical Chinese texts. The tasks of the Archive include researching and describing its oriental objects, mapping their origin, exploring the oriental collection inherited from his paternal grandfather, Viktor Olgyai and expanding himself, and compiling a descriptive catalog.
A key area of research is a comparative textual critique of translated texts in Chinese classical literature: exploring the Chinese sources and foreign language translations of Tao Te King and Ji king, and evaluating the role of Chinese translations in Karattson ‘s oeuvre.
We continuously upload digital copies of the works of art collected during the research to the Photo & Audiovisual Database, as well as newly created interviews, other photos, motion pictures and sound recordings.
Gábor Karátson’s library has thousands of volumes. The complete processing of the works of fiction, together with publications related to the Oriental materials, 1956 and the Danube movement, is the responsibility of the Archive.
Having published the catalog of the Faust exhibition, the next volume in the book series of the Archive is András Lányi’s personal work on his intellectual journeys with Gábor Karátson. The volume has been published in 2022.
The Apartment Gallery and Memorial is the exhibition space for a small, thematic part of the legacy. We can see the documents of Gábor Karátson’s role in 1956, his participation in the Danube movements, the most important pieces of his fine art work, the inherited and the oriental works he collected in the personal space furnished with the furniture of the artist’s family.
