BOOK REVIEW

Pocs - Posters 2003 - 1977 Edited, published, and available from Peter Pocs, POSTER'V Design Studio, Budapest (HU) (Dec 2003) ; 120 pages, 24 x 24 cm, 150 color reproductions; softcover; ISBN 963-212-056-6; in english, hungarian and spanish With texts by Peter Fitz, Xavier Bermudez, Lajos Parti Nagy, Ruth Walton, Lajos Szakolczay, Lorand Hegyi and Peter Pocs, a short biography and a long bibliography, this is the most extensive and detailed monograph about Pocs, and in addition a well designed book. The cover is based on the 1997 poster "Hungarian Salon", for the National Association uf Hungarian Artists

In 1987, quite by chance I stumbled into a poster exhibition at the Dorottya Gallery in downtown Budapest, by an artist from whom I had never heard before. Some of the posters reminded me of polish posters, but at that time, the polish poster school was so dominant in eastern Europe that this was not unusual. The colors of most posters were brighter however, the design more polished, and the print quality better. One poster in particular caught my attention, a masked face with a wide open black mouth, but the staff of the gallery pretended that this was their last copy and they did not want to sell it to me. It was clear that they felt very uneasy about this particular piece. A few years later, I met it's designer Peter Pocs in Kecskemet, and he explained what was obvious to everybody in Hungary: The mask was the hungarian flag, and the hole a reference to the uprising in 1956 when the hated communist symbols in the center were cut out from it, a practice that could be observed again in East Germany on the fall of the soviet empire in 1989. The poster, for the movie "Lucky Daniel", was made in 1983, and it was not in the governements interest to be reminded of the so-called "events" of 1956. Today it is hard to imagine how much courage it took to design and publish such a poster in the middle of the cold war.

It gave me great pleasure to find this poster in Peter Pocs catalogue, and also to see that the Dorottya exhibition was his first big one man show. Things have improved steadily for Peter Pocs since then, although few of his hungarian colleagues have survived the political changes artistically. Today Pocs is well known internationally, has invented a new poster style with his clay models, and is at the peak of his already amazing productivity.

1980, Exhibition of young artists studios

1988, Peter Pocs poster exhibition in Komarom

1996, DOPP in GGG (exhibition of the group Ducki, Orosz, Pinczehelyi and Pocs at the GGG Gallery in Tokyo)

2000, Tamas T. Nagy - Cheese Trade Company

Read what Xavier Bermudez, Director of the International Poster Biennale in Mexico, writes about him in the book: In November 2001, we had the pleasure of welcoming Peter Pocs, an extraordinary poster designer to Mexico City. He expressed to a group of Mexican designers his enthusiasm about the poster as a medium of communication, expression and artistic experimentation. With an admirably subtle irony and eyes and hands trained in Hungary, Pocs demonstrated once and for all that the ideas and concepts embraced by poster designers should come from the everyday lives and respective cultures, which each of them has inherited and learnt. His close observation of the environment and high sensitivity to finding original forms of artistic expression make Pocs constantly try new styles, at the same time that he finds in the integration of his statuettes the strength of texture a the unique colours of malleable materials. Peter explained that one day his two little daughters took home some Plasticine, which they used for shaping figures, as part of their playful education at kindergarten: "The sight of my girls enjoying that malleable material in their hands made me really curious, and I could not help joining in their play. It was so pleasant to feel the wetness and consistency of that strange vegetal material that I decided to integrate it into my posters.17 Since then, Peter has been perfecting his technique of moulding and preparing his own materials, creating real sculptures, which assume an ephemeral, yet transcendent role, when caught in a masterly manner by his photographer friends. Under the direction of the artist-designer from Budapest, the photographers evidenced great dexterity in the use of light, whereby they managed to cooperate with him in this new form of expression. Peter's curiosity, his insistence on the freshness peculiar to children as well as the spontaneous approach to and exploration of new ways, are qualities which enabled him to become one of the major charismatic poster designers in Europe. Inspired obviously by Poland, his calligraphic concept forms part of the texture of his works. The way he manipulates his three-dimensional metaphors and the appearance of his materials, achieved both manually and through the light and shade in the photographic images, makes his oeuvre unique and absolutely original in the history of poster design. Confident that the concepts and ideas represented by his posters will be sufficiently clear to the audience, Pocs has increasingly taken advantage of the new possibilities of digital montage and retouching, thereby developing an individual poster style. His work offers a perfect blend of different elements, whereby the viewer enjoys sedate colours and textures, which result in tactile sensation without having to touch anything. In short, with his calligraphic solutions, which make up a coherent unit, Pocs evidences the craftsmanship hidden in his hands. Everything in its place, the information well ordered and only what is necessary; attractive to the eye and speaking its own language. What more can we expect from Pocs's posters?

1986, Fatima Concert

2000, Tamas T. Nagy - Cheese Trade Company