Pinczehelyi Sándor

Sándor Pinczehelyi is a poster designer, painter and conceptual artist. After finishing teacher’s college at his hometown, Pécs, Pinczehelyi built career in multiple areas. He became a teacher at the University of Pécs, he started to work as a poster designer, and later he was the director of the prominent gallery, Pécsi Galéria, for 22 years.

In the 1970s he was a member of an important underground Neo-Avant-Garde artist group, Pécsi Műhely (Pécs Workshop), which was formed by conceptual artists. He created conceptual and serial works, photo series, paintings and installations in the 1970s and 1980s.

In 1986 he founded the DOPP group of poster artists, together with Krzyzstof Ducki, István Orosz and Péter Pócs. Poster design remained the focus of his art. On his posters he preferred to use and redefine common symbols, like the Hungarian tricolor, the red star and sickle, the paving stone and “typical” Hungarian things, like paprika. The objects and symbols always appear in a new, very ironic context, in which their meaning is altered, and their cliché nature is emphasized.  In the 1980s and 1990s he also employed the everyday symbols of the modern, consumerist societies.          

He is a founder and the former head of the Hungarian Poster Association (MPT). He is still designing posters for cultural events, theatres, etc. He is also very active as a painter, his works are regularly shown on exhibitions. He became member of the Széchenyi Academy for Arts and Literature.                                                                                             .