Emese Kürti

Intuitive Actions – Proto-Actionism in Hungary from the early sixties
Emese Kürti

Dr. László Végh (born in 1931), composer and radiologist, played a decisively influential role in the forming of the underground art scene of the sixties. He presented his first concrete and electronic music compositions (from 1958) for the living representatives of Hungarian modernism under repression and for the young generation of the new avant-garde in quasi-democratic communities of private spaces. Due to this mediating cultural activity, his non-conformist personality and appearance, his impressive sub-cultural network across generations, Dr. Végh offered a model of alternative living and the continuity of modernism behind the iron curtain.
His first actions – for which I would introduce the term ’intuitive actions’ (from 1963 to 1970) – were performed with young artist of the subculture and opened the way for Happening and Fluxus – represented by Gábor Altorjay and Tamás Szentjóby – and guaranteed the perspective of the deconstruction of the traditional art forms through works of avant-garde and experimental music.

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