ADOLF PEN AND HIS PICTORIAL EXPRESSION

The painting credo of Adolf Pen is focused with the same critical, exceptionally strict and disciplined attitude toward experience as it is toward creative improvisation... Third-dimensionality is sacrificed for plane; the painter, with laboratory-like perseverance, seeks an optimum dichotomy; the shape or form is cleared of all detail which might disturb their liberal color values. What makes Pen's paintings particularly recognizable is definitely the harmonious proportion between expressiveness in shape and color and the fact that idea is dominant in both.

Prof. Vlado Sagadin, art historian

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Houses like fortifications, almost threatening; wide and vast landscapes ending in darkness... Filled with narration, it is an art form that encourages thought and demands an "accomplished" spectator.

Dr. E.Perny, Vienna

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Landscapes are the basic thematic framework of Adolf Pen's paintings and are most often connected with architecture. The inclusion of this element into his scenery provides his pictures with significant compositional stability and completeness. Although his motifs show but a bit of nature, they appear as a firmly structured whole. A striving toward balance of color, as well as all other components, interpose into his works a special epic, almost monumental, atmosphere, even though mood is not as important to the painter as a rational attitude toward forming images. Contributing to the plasticity of Pen's paintings is the strongly emphasized play of light and shadow which imparts a romantic vitality - dependent, of course, upon his choice of motif. Although the real world is his point of departure, his work is far from being realistic. The painter simplifies natural forms and changes them into colored planes in a manner that shows his constant search for the very best interactive proportions. Details as a whole are united and simplified in a mutual color denominator that creates order and clarity. Penn applies the same principles to his figurative and "pure" architectural motifs as he does to landscapes. Moderately abstract, or better said, leaning more toward the abstract, his recent paintings seem to be moving away from realistic images and are becoming more personalized in color. His orientation toward geometrical transformation and presentation of motifs in planes correspond the best and result in his ability to visualize the Pannonian architectural heritage with a sensitive expressiveness.

Dr. Cene Avguštin, art historian