Much research has been done into how color affects the human psyche, and this research has long been applied in the real world. In retail, for example, stores favor red carpets over blue because the latter is thought to remind people subconsciously of the sea and make them feel ill at ease. Hungarian artist Ilona Keserü, whose retrospective show “Flow” just opened at Muzeum Susch in Switzerland, has done ample independent research into color theory over her 70-year career, having first studied at the University of Fine Art in Budapest in the 1950s before developing her own artistic voice and honing her practice. Decades later, to stand before one of her canvases is to marvel at her application of color: vivid hues stand out from the wall and capture your imagination with their unbridled energy and dynamism.
The 1950s was a time marked first by Stalinization and then a period of liberalization after his death in 1953. At this time, Hungarians were not permitted to travel outside of the Eastern Bloc. In 1959, however, Keserü was issued a limited passport and took her first trip abroad to Poland, where she saw abstract paintings in museums for the first time. She started painting her own abstractions upon her return. In 1962, Keserü was able to travel to the West for one year. She spent the entirety of it in Rome and had her first solo exhibition at the Galleria Bars. In 1964, the artist painted her first large-scale work, Silvery Picture. Yet in spite of her forays into the academics of abstraction, it was the folk art of Hungary that offered Keserü the most vital inspiration, for it pointed in an authentic direction, regardless of ideological constraints, connected past with present and highlighted universal values. To look at Keserü’s career is to recognize folkloric motifs throughout, albeit motifs rendered to unmistakably belong to the latter part of the 20th Century.
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In 1967, Keserü first became aware of the intuitive materialization of shape when she came across Baroque tombstones in the village of Balatonudvari. Thereafter, the tombstone was a recurring motif in Keseru’s work—curator Monica Zsikla said that the tombstone portrayed the artist’s preoccupation with mortality, which stayed with her throughout her life even as she conveys that preoccupation through Pop sensibilities, with bright pink and orange tones dominating the canvases. The artist’s interest in shape continues in works showing undulating lines, and it has been argued that Keserü’s obsession with these flowing shapes derives from her interest in the female body and in second-wave feminism. More than once, she depicted abstractions of the female form via flowing lines and pink tones, with the initial artworks made during a time when female desire was still taboo. However, it is important to note here that feminist theories attached to second-wave feminism and developing in the United States and Western Europe were barely known in Hungary until the second half of the 1970s. More widely, Keserü’s work has been compared with that of artists such as Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgeois and Judy Chicago. For her part, Keseru cites the artists who have profoundly influenced her outlook as Maria Jarema, Alberto Burri, Lucio Fontana and Cy Twombly.
I had the opportunity to speak to Polish entrepreneur and art collector Grażyna Kulczyk, founder of the Muzeum Susch. “I came to Susch and wanted to develop the former monastery site while respecting its 12th-century origins,” Kulzcyk told Observer. “Since then, the aim has been to showcase artists who have been both overlooked and misread.” It is only the interiors of the former monastery that have been altered. From the outside, the museum and its environs could form a 16th-century painting, with the mountains on either side and the river Inn flowing nearby.
It was in the 1970s that Keserü started her own independent color research that has since been her focus for many decades. She explained her initial observations with respect to the colors of the rainbow and skin colors as follows: “Every color of the rainbow is in harmony with each and every shade of skin amongst the people living on Earth.”
Keserü was also notably among the first of the artists of her generation to incorporate sewing into her practice—not as a mere craft but as a viable means of artistic expression. Creating textile reliefs, she developed a canvas-embossing technique that would become her trademark. In this exhibition, one work is showcased that highlights both Keseru’s love of color and her sewing abilities: the enormous Color-Space textile composition that takes up much of the main room of the space. It is a joyous, unapologetic, monumental piece of art that invites you to walk around it, to walk within it and to feel a sense of awe.
The exhibition at Muzeum Susch is well worth seeing, and I recommend the train ride from Zurich through the Alps affording spectacular Brueghel-esque mountain views throughout. Keserü turns 91 this year, and it is a boon to see this thorough and lively retrospective of her work with her most recent paintings, as well as her early creations, on display in an unparalleled setting. Take your time to contemplate the works—as the artist wrote in 1979, “Look at a painting with the uncertain, multitudinous, complete self that shares in the unexpected and incomprehensible events of your life.”
“Ilona Keseru, Flow” runs at Muzeum Susch in Switzerland through October 26, 2025.
