It is a dual affection that outlines the world of Antal Kerék’s paintings. On the one hand, it is a desire to leave for the eternal, colourful glittering of the Mediterranean Region. On the other hand, it is finding home amongst the sheltering hills of Szada. Here and there thrilling adventures flare up in fractions of vibrant southern landscapes, while, at other places, we find lands of security and protection. The paintings are influenced by the duality and fluctuating mood of affections and choices, adventure and quieting down, leaving and finding a way back home. At times, reality and illusion are blending into each other, the fractions of real journey images are transformed by the special tools of painting. The same way, the artist’s imagination re-creates the home environment into a dreamlike inner vision.

Antal Kerék brings back the tradition of travelling painters.
The Mediterranean Region attracts him like it attracted many Hungarian writers and painters throughout centuries, such as Antal Ligeti, Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka, Aurél Bernáth, or Pál Molnár C.

We can feel a secret kinship lying behind this never ending affection. Maybe it is due to the Pannonian heritage, the presence of the ancient Roman Empire, or it derives from our traditionally Latin-related culture. Anyhow, the gods of the Olympus already found a home in Pannonia long ago, and the Mediterranean lands and their people’s mentality has become the symbol of a free, worriless and nature-loving way of life.
In contrast to our smaller homeland, with its changeable and erratic weather, the “Southland” appears to be the Arcadia of sunshine and fertility. Its people are not burdened with daily fights for existence; being timeless and out of history, they enjoy the patronage of gods. Their environment, clothing, and movements are influenced by a natural sensitivity towards beauty, their belongings and buildings reflect rationally hardly definable characteristics of the well-proportioned and ideal patterns.

Classic beauty and a complete sense of existence characterize the pictures of Antal Kerék. A mix of still quietness and hidden sensuous excitement create the special mood of the paintings. The pictures of a harbour or street are equally uneventful like the wide-panorama landscapes. It is the repressed stillness of the immense midday heat, the kind of stuffy muteness whose basic rhythm is created by the knocking sounds of boats rocking upon the harbour waves, by the whir of swinging clothes in empty streets, and by the chirp of crickets.
The uproar of colours reaches its zenith at noontime in the motionless streets. The flaming sun stirs up the intensity of colours to the extremes. This clourful, blinding beauty has lured the painters for centuries to Sicily, Crete, and Corfu. Yet, siesta is never a dead silence; it is a temporary rest, a preparation for the real, vibrant life that starts as evening time approaches. As the melting shining of the sun fades, the objects regain their shapes and outlines. The structure of southern towns is taking shape more and more clearly in the light of the late afternoon sun together with the wonderful living, breathing-organic framework of the closely attached, coloured buildings. The square-shaped constructions of the abstract and geometric colour paintings of Modrian or Malevich show no clearer visual structure than these Mediterranean street patterns. Within the compositions of Antal Kerék, this inner, hidden structure of colours and lines gets a special, sensitive accentuation. Layers of colours of windows with Venetian blinds, narrow streets leading to the see, rocking boats in small harbours melt into each other in such an order that only the randomness of nature can create.

Looking at the paintings of Antal Kerék, it seems that the hills of Szada are not so far away from Toledo or Corfu as we may think.
The capricious, twisting-bending branched willow-beds are the local relatives of olive groves. Their trunks are painted red, blue, and white by the setting sun and imagination, making the line of motionless trees a living force of nature. Behind their branches, the clourful walls of houses create a fairy-tale like fantasy landscape from the rural reality, just as a Szada hillside with wavy patterns of wheat stripes is transformed by an inner, spiritual scenery. These are definitely not irrational or surreal landscapes, however, their exaggerated colours and decorative styled line patterns employ the natural experience only as a starting point. Their personal appeal derives from these unique pictorial transcriptions that, although by only a little, still “abstract” the world of visual representation from the direct natural sight. The home neighbourhood is full of life, hospitality, and optimism. Yet, it is not uninteresting or apathetic. The whole sight is filled with the landscape’s whirling, brightly coloured, and clattering life, a smack of restlessness, and some sensuous excitement pulsating beneath the surface.

It is the same vitality that prepossesses the images of the green Portuguese garden gate, the Corfu window with Venetian blinds, the solitary Portuguese boat, the Maltese harbour, and the church tower in Szada. Their power of colours rivals sunshine outside and radiates towards us being a true source of energy filling us up with vitality.