What did the Art School represent in your professional education?
I think that it is very important to attend an Art School. I believe that in the beginning of our career it is very important to have contact with other young designers who have the same difficulties, the same goal, the same affirmation and expression desires, and so on. This contact can only happen at an Art School. Actually, what we learn with our colleagues is much more than what we learn with our teachers. Of course, after a certain time we are responsible for our own way and we learn from our everyday practice and from our self-taught studies.
Do you think that having studied painting was important to your graphical artist education?
In reality, while I was studying at the Modern Art Museum, I really wanted to be a painter. I believe that the graphical artist must know painting, as well as engraving and sculpture. The graphical artists must have erudition on their work as well as other artists who are not engaged with the process of series reproduction of their work.
Could you define the limits between the advertising drawer and the graphical artist?
The graphical artists have their own graphical world, gradual development, different ways of expression, which is very different from style. I do think that the real graphic artist should not have style: the visualization process of a work should have the theme as its starting point and then go to a specific and formal treatment. I sincerely believe more in approaching methods of a work than in a standard visualization, something pre-existent.
Do you think that the way you see the graphic arts has anything to do with the fact that you have studied at a European Art School?
Yes, of course. It is unnecessary to talk about the Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Bulgarian graphic arts. In those schools they teach drawing as a basic course. In fact, drawing is fundamental. It is impossible to conceive a graphical artist, or even a visual programmer who does not know how to draw. They start from the basis and, in the future, the graphic school student will become an artist able to use all the letters from his graphic alphabet without having a pre-established code.
What about the industrial designer?
At my Hungarian School the artistic drawing classes were taught together to both graphic arts and industrial designer courses. We can notice, thus, the importance they give to drawing, which is as I have said, a fundamental expression element.
And your work as illustrator?
I do not see a problem in developing at the same time two kinds of work, with so different universes, but curiously interlinked. Professionally, I find it very interesting to be an illustrator and TV audiovisual programmer. Of course, I find that I can be more myself when I make a book or disc cover and even more so when I illustrate a book.
Is it possible on TV?
The work on TV is scheduled, rational with clear and defined goals. I believe it is a luxury to use the TV penetration to be hermetic, intimate, and ambiguous. It is a teamwork that asks for a lot of self-discipline. On the other hand, as an artist and person, we need to put personal things in our work. Thus, the illustration appears.
Correio Filatélico Magazine – Year 4, May, 1980.
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