Gulyás, Gyula: Marilyn Monroe (1984)

Gyula Gulyás (1944–2008) emerged in the 1970s as a sculptor, regularly participating in the Balatonboglár Chapel Exhibitions and the Villány artists’ colony. Following his constructivist-minimalist sculptures with conceptual features, he later turned to more traditional themes and techniques, first appearing in his oeuvre in 1975 with a portrait of Tibor Vilt. In 1984, he presented a series of portraits of artists—based on photographs and paintings—at a joint exhibition with Tamás Hencze, where the Monroe theme. The figure of the “female icon,” which also fascinated Andy Warhol, is a quintessential Pop Art subject. The plaster sculpture of Marilyn Monroe held in the Ludwig Museum since 1997—like most of Gulyás’s portraits—clearly places the material in the service of unraveling the Monroe enigma, processing the woman’s mysterious, myth-making, and often-cited erotic aura. In 1990, the Kunsthalle organized an exhibition at the Dorottya Street Gallery dedicated to Gulyás’s works on Monroe, which also traveled abroad.