Görög Lajos

An important figure of the flourishing poster art movement in the 1960’s and 1970’s, Lajos Görög’s most outstanding creations are his movie posters and his typographic works.

Görög has studied at the University of Applied Arts between 1946 and 1948, under Sándor Bortnyik, then after its reorganization in 1949-1951, at the University of Fine Arts under György Konecsni.

From 1963 on, Görög was member of the Papp-group and took part in their exhibitions. He started his career at the end of the 1950s and joined the expressive, painting-like poster style that arose in response to the strict socialist realist style. Görög employed sharp contrasts and picturesque effects on his works, which often show a monochrome colour scale. This expressive style of him appeared on the posters of the early 1960s as well.

In the 1960’s, Görög played an important role in the resurgence of the movie poster. He used a wide range of techniques: paper cut, delicate and fine drawing, oil painting, ‘burned’ (strongly contrasted) photos, montage and colour photographs as well. One of Görög’s most famous works is a very unique and elegant design for the Fellini movie “8 and ½”.  He also produced a notable poster for “Rocco and his Brothers”.

Besides his powerful photo-based designs, some of Görög’s works show the influence of pop art and neo-secession. These designs are colourful and are constructed by the use of decorative lines and coloured areas. Some of his works even show the influence of the visual world of comics.

From the end of the 1950’s, Görög also prefered the pure typographic design, which is more apparent in his art in the 1960’s. Gábor Papp, with whom Görög had an excellent relationship, might have been an influence on this change in style.  Görög also worked with pure, clear geometric forms and elegantly shaped letters. He created several successful emblems and logos, such the ones for BNV (Budapest International Fair) and Ibusz (Hungarian Tourism Company).

In the 1970's, he created some Pop Art tinged movie poster designs marked by strong contrasts.