Ilona Keserü is one of Hungary’s leading abstract artists. Her extraordinary career spans over seventy years and until recently her work has been notably overlooked outside eastern Europe. Post-war, Keserü pioneered a unique artistic language out of a time of social repression and a male orientated art system. Her exploration of material, colour and the body draws comparison to the work of Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgeois and Judy Chicago.

Throughout her career, Keserü pursued a new kind of ‘feminine imagery’. She created a recognisable body of abstract work that opposed a cold minimalist style devoid of gendered references. In 1967 Keserü discovered the heart shaped headstones at a cemetery in Balatonudvari in Hungary, and these came to inspire the gently rolling lobed motifs in her paintings and works on paper for years to come. This simple yet complex formula of figures has proven to be irrepressibly long-lived and incredibly versatile over the course of its adaption in paintings, prints and reliefs.

In the work ‘Forming Space’ (1981), Keserü revisits and adapts her well-known tombstone series by reproducing the shape with a mangle roller. Saturated heartshaped mounds of colour are placed in dynamic rhythm; orange and pink curves reflect purple and pink shapes asymmetrically. Yet in contrast to other similar works from the series produced in the 1960s, ‘Forming Space’ stands out because here the colourful forms foreground an underpainted area of expressive thinly indian ink washes. This combination brings together two distinct types of mark making, which Keserü has adopted throughout her career.

Her unique artistic language and peerless ability to render colour and form confirms Keserü as a leading figure in the international history of abstraction.