"Attila József. Janet Brooks Gerloff. Two artists taking people as their theme. Both extraordinarily sensitive: they search the depth of the innermost existence. They come accross such images in poetry and painting which are impossible not to see or hear. Both are participants of a dialogue distant in time and space, dealing with the origin of art."

Prof. Friedrich Münch


Janet Brooks Gerloff’s works are not illustrations of Attila József's poems. We can witness an artful encounter, or as Werner Spies puts it, The "four-handed piece" of a poem and a painting.

How did the American born painter living in Aachen come accross Attila József's poetry? The most frequent route of poems is the personal encounter. So it happened this time also. Mrs Ágnes Meggyes Wirtz, an art historian living in Aachen gave the poems along with her own enthusiasm to Janet Brooks Gerloff, who immersed herself in the world of the poems with respect and honesty searching for her own self, her own visual representation through her paintings.

Janet Brooks Gerloff's works are not illustrations of Attila József's poems. It is obvious that the artist's paintings represent something different in Hungary than in Germany. At this exhibition is not "our well-known" Attila József who appears on the canvas but the works of an "outsider". Our great poet can be seen in the interpretation of an artist. The painter who hereby meets Attila József has amongst others been inspired by Goethe’s Faust, Beckett’s play, or Schubert's "Winter Journey".

The exhibition is not only a remembrance or retrospection, one can observe a lively artistic dialogue. Do the interpretation of paintings and the drawings meet the observer's own concept with the meaning of Attila Jozsef's poetry, his self concept, loneliness and longing for love?