El Kazovszkij died on July 21 at the age of 59.
The funeral, in Budapest's Farkasrét Cemetery, was attended by a who's who of Hungarian cultural life. Among them was the literary historian István Margócsy, who called El Kazovszkij a "rare, exceptional person" who lived by her own rules and presented "mythical strengths" in every gesture. She represented the "revolution of diversity", accepting neither nature nor society and rejecting the accepted artistic and cultural conventions. In spite of her extraordinarily self-certain positions on matters, El Kazovszkij's gestures, as well as her work, were familiar and approachable, Margócsy added.
The paradox El Kazovszkij presented in her images is the paradox of life: she painted the beauty of suffering and beauty as suffering, Margócsy said. She objectified her own life in her pictures, but always in a different way.
State Secretary Márta Schneider, who paid respects to El Kazovszkij on behalf of the Ministry of Education and Culture, praised the painter as a figure of extraordinary originality on Hungary's art scene for the past three decades. A world traveller, El Kazovszkij visited not only all of Europe, but North Africa and Southeast Asia just to see a picture or to touch a statue.
"She was brave, strong, daring, piercingly sharp," Schneider said. At the same time, she was a "shy and defenseless being, dependent on the love and help of her friends."
El Kazovszkij was a winner of the Munkácsy Prize, the Palladium Prize and the Kossuth Prize, Hungary's highest honour for artists, Schneider noted.
The aesthete András Rényi remembered El Kazovszkij as "mercilessly strong" and said her strength is imparted in her works.
"You are here with us, and you shall remain with us; you tie together the gentle ribbons of love," said the poet Ákos Szilágyi at El Kazovszkij's grave.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI) / Photo: Péter Kollányi (MTI)
