János Kósa (Hungary)

The End / 2010 / Oil on canvas / 190cm×210cm

Appreciation: Older generations especially artists in China may still remember a sarcastic oil painting The End (1948) by a Soviet Union artist Kukryiniksyi.The painting depicts that Hitler, the leader of the German Nazis and Goebbels are panic-stricken in a basement before the Capture of Berlin by the Soviet Red Army in 1945, mocking the destruction of the Nazis. Janos Kosa, the Hungarian artist had a catalogue of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow when he was a child and one picture he found terrifying was The End and he still remembered the shocking experience. The artist reworked the painting The End in 2010, keeping the composition and part of the elements of the previous artwork and incorporating his childhood memory, the construction toy which was equivalent to Lego and portrait of himself as a child, which extended an ironic implication.

János Kósa was born in Budapest in 1962. He graduated from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. He is now the Head of Liberal Arts of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. He has participated in many famous exhibitions in Budapest, Hungary.