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Biography of Marton Takáts
Marton Takáts was born in Budapest in 1971, in a family of French-speaking, Francophile artists. His grandfather was a painter. At the age of five, he started to draw. Then, influenced by Rembrandt, Goya, Durer, Piranesi, he took interest in graphic art as he was only thirteen. He studied at the Fine Arts School in Budapest from 1990 to 1995, majoring in printmaking. As soon as he had graduated, he came to France for his first exhibition organised in Saint-Peray (near Valence) by the “Amitiés Franco-hongroises”. A period of uncertainty and questioning followed: should he go on with etching and, if he continued, how should his work develop? He eluded the dilemma in picturing himself as a “vagabond engraver”, i.e. an intermittent artist in time and space.
From 1998 on, Marton Takáts came to Paris regularly since he thinks that engravers enjoy a certain freedom there. He participated in the Trace 98 exhibition and met there Pierrre Delvincourt and Guy Braun. He received a prize at the Salon des Artistes français in 1999. In 2000, the town of Miskolc, the Hungarian capital of printmaking, commissioned him to print a series of fifteen large etchings. The artist then worked both in Budapest and Paris.
Nearly each of his prints starts with a drawing, for the emotion of the moment and the atmosphere to be captured. He made hundreds of them, with pen-and-ink for characters, or sepia wash-painting for landscapes.
The artist uses several techniques - etching, dry-point, burin, mixed techniques, monotypes (which give an impression of spontaneity). He also paints with gouache and nowadays focuses on painting.
Marton Takáts, who lives and works in Budapest these days, likes to leave a mark in metal in a quick, wide, spontaneous movement. Thus he responds to the mystery and uncertainty of the alchemy which enables him to obtain a print without ever being able to claim absolute mastery of the transmutation.