Artist reception Saturday for Vanilia Majoros at New Haven Public Library

New Haven Free Public Library Art Gallery
133 Elm St., New Haven
Vanilia Majoros: Blue
Through Feb. 15, 2013.
Artist's reception: Sat., Jan. 12, 2—4 p.m.

Press release from Azoth Gallery

Vanilia Majoros came from Hungary to the US in 2003. She lives in New Haven, and teaches Printmaking at Creative Arts Workshop. An exhibit of her prints, Blue, is now on view at the New Haven Free Public Library. There will be an artist's reception for Majoros on Sat., Jan. 12, from 2—4 p.m.

"I love to explore my own self and image; this is the culmination of the fusion of science and art for me," writes Majoros. "I try to see things in my own way, shaped by my life and my experiences. For each viewer this experience an entry into this personal world through visual or mental images, can be uniquely his own."

"When I left Hungary, I thought my professional career would continue in the US," writes Majoros. "My husband had applied for a deanship at The New School University in New York City and had hoped his new position would create a job for me in the Art and Design College at New School or at Parsons School of Design. Teaching in the graduate program in one of these sounded very good for an art historian like me: I received my Ph.D. in Art History in 1997 in Budapest, and worked there as a scholar and as head of the Art Collection of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. I have written six books and more than one hundred articles about European Modernism.

Vanilia Majoros: "Xoxo"

"But my husband's dream did not come true; though by 2004 he was a Professor of Sociology and Political Science at Yale. I spent my time at the Yale Libraries researching and at home writing my largest book about one of the best Hungarian painters, Lajos Tihanyi, who died in Paris in 1938. My book was published in Budapest in 2004, and this was a changing point in my professional life. My dream to become a Yale professor did not materialize, but a new dream about being an artist was born. I decided to learn something new. After eleven solo shows of my photos in Hungary, I determined art as a new field of pursuit, and I began my studies of Calligraphy with Martha German and of Printmaking with Barbara Harder at the Creative Arts Workshop.

"From 2006, I was a guest student in the Yale School of Art, in the first year completing all of the Printmaking classes with Norm Paris. After finishing the Graduate Printmaking Seminar with Rochelle Feinstein, I was invited to teach printmaking in the Creative Arts Workshop. Since 2005, I've participated in group shows in New Haven, and in 2009 my first solo show took place at the DaSilva Gallery. In 2010, the Arts Council of New Haven invited me for a show in Gallery 195 in the First Niagara Bank, and The New Haven Register published a complimentary article about Barbara Marks' and my works in this show. In 2011, I was the first exhibitor at the Mitchell Library in Westville."

Majoros' prints are in private collections in the US, Hungary, Austria, Australia, China, Japan, Switzerland, Ireland and Germany. Some of her unique woodcuts, carborundum, and solar prints are in the Collection of the National Gallery of Hungary, the Literary Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.

"My unique prints are not only monotypes, but mono prints by woodcut, carborundum, linoleum cut, lithograph and etching. I make prints connected to Architecture, Music, Literature and Fine Art, a series dedicated to Gehry, and portraits about Gyorgy Ligeti, Anna Netrebko, Joan Sutherland, Paul Auster and Chuck Close. My Connecticut Garden series is based on Nature, but I like semi-Abstraction."