Text: György Szegő

Katalin Keserü, Professor of Art History, has been a pioneer of several generations of art historians, focusing on visual and applied arts, contemporary genres, including the history of architecture in the 20th century, as well as their contemporary permeations. She interprets and synthesises all of this with an individual, critical vision. For him, it is a single entirety, in which she summarizes elements that are contradictory, even if only apparently, freeing them from their stylistic and genre cages. In this way, she is able to convey and sublimate it into the most sensitive reading of the visual culture of the 19th and 20th centuries, and of the 21st century so far.
The architecture and fine art of Imre Makovecz — and especially that of his early school — and its monographic treatment and analysis are still almost a blank spot. Perhaps because it is a whole entirety independent of the zeitgeist and mainstream, and unravelling it and bringing it to the present is a serious challenge. For the time being, Keserü’s volume focuses on the 1960s and 70s. The book’s great merit lies in its bilingualism. This could be a breakthrough, and the theoretical analysis/evaluation of the Makovecz school could finally be re-launched in international professional circles.