Hungarian artist’s painting exhibited in the USA

Hungarian artist, Tibor Simon-Mazula’s painting titled Combing was chosen to be exhibited at the Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts. He is the only European artist whose painting was chosen to be shown at this international exhibition. Zoom.hu interviewed him about his time in San Francisco and about his return to Hungary.

Tibor was mentioned to be an “emerging artist” in 2013, had a two-month solo exhibition in San Francisco and was called “artist of the month” by the American artlist.com. How come his art is mostly known in the USA?

He spent the last decade living and working in the US, and although there are lots of opportunities there for an artist, it is still not easy to be chosen for an exhibition like the one at the FSU Museum of Fine Arts. He considers this a great success, since the FSU is a state institution which gives the event more prestige. Around 300 artists sent in about 600 works. The jurors selected only 44 to include in the 33rd Tallahassee International exhibition, and the Combing was one of them.

Tibor and his wife moved to San Francisco because they wanted to be part of the local art scene. He says that now he has more friends there than in Hungary. San Francisco is very inspiring, with many painters, photographers, dancers and musicians living there. It is like everyone in Los Angeles is working in the film industry, and everyone in San Francisco is an artist. Although this seems to be changing because more and more IT specialists come into the city.

Tibor is still very proud that he had a two-month exhibition in San Francisco’s Academy of Art University. One of the interesting things about this was that he got his own professional team to help him plan the exhibition. Tibor had 16 paintings at the art show and he could sell 10 of them. The American Art Collector magazine wrote a whole page about the exhibition.

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At the question of why he came home to Hungary if he could reach that kind of success in the US, he replied:

“I just had to come home to replenish my energy. It is very hard to be that far away from home. Everything weights too much and you need a lot of energy for that. Sometimes that energy runs out. It is much harder than living somewhere in Europe, since it is not just a two-hour flight from your hometown. It was eating away at me.”