Born in Perkata in 1948, Kamill Major is a French artist of Hungarian origin. Parallel to his studies at the Pécs High School of Decorative Arts, he undertook numerous enamel experiments at the Bonyhád factory and took an active part in artistic life.In 1972, after a brief stay in Budapest, he left Hungary for France, where he applied for political asylum. He settled in Paris and enrolled at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, where he had access to the school's studios to...

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  Biography of Kamill Major

  Born in Perkata in 1948, Kamill Major is a French artist of Hungarian origin. Parallel to his studies at the Pécs High School of Decorative Arts, he undertook numerous enamel experiments at the Bonyhád factory and took an active part in artistic life.
  In 1972, after a brief stay in Budapest, he left Hungary for France, where he applied for political asylum. He settled in Paris and enrolled at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, where he had access to the school's studios to continue his work. It was there, with Éric Seydoux, that he discovered screen printing, which was to play an important role in his creative work. After graduating, he remained at ENSAD, where he was hired as an art teacher.During his first years in Paris, Major continued the exploration of geometric painting (1968 - 1976) - begun while he was still in Hungary. His quest for sobriety led him to progressively strip his canvases of all superfluity, retaining only the essentials: straight lines that criss-crossed and then gradually transformed into a form of writing. These were the Trames and Écriture periods (1976 - 2020). This writing, reminiscent of the cuneiform characters on Akkadian clay tablets, takes the form of monumental canvases, wood reliefs or silkscreen prints, and goes by the names of Gilgamesh, Akkad or Palmyra.At the same time, Kamill Major likes to explore other worlds in an incessant back-and-forth. Thus the period of Photos de cimetières (1974 - 2000) - On his arrival in Paris, he lived very close to Père-Lachaise and often strolled there. He was fascinated by the numerous funerary medallions adorning the tombs, often faded or broken. The degradation of these objects fascinated him. The erasure caused by the passage of time lends them a mysterious, poetic quality. Major sees this destruction as an act of creation, introducing life into inert matter. He decided to integrate it into all his creative techniques. It was in this spirit that he created Papiers déchirés (1988 - 1992) and Chiffons (2020 - 2023). Nor does he hesitate to “violate” some of his wood reliefs in the Écriture series with a saw or axe to increase the density of their presence.Since 2000, Major has lived in a small village in the Gard region of France, and his garden is his kingdom. The latter can be discovered in the Hortus meus series (2020 - 2025). Although they are still non-figurative, we see plants in jubilation, grasses dancing in the wind, swarms of insects fluttering about, an explosion of joy... But whether they are serious or seem more light-hearted, Major's works are distinguished by their great simplicity. They ask existential questions, sometimes very profound ones, and it is probably nature and its perpetual cycles that provide the answers.

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