József Bartl joined the Old Colony of Artists in Szentendre in 1972 and with that the art scene of the town, too. HE was patronized by master artists like János Kmetty and István Ilosvai Varga . However, it was not the post-Nagybánya ideas that influenced him immensely but the method that was represented by Dezső Korniss and Endre Bálint. Bartle learned about folk motifs which he later on rendered on his paintings. He put the symbols into a unique geometric system of signs and thus creating a kind of store for symbols, in other words, a 'register of symbols'.

The signs and symbols that accompanies his entire career communicate in a universal language , nevertheless, their origin is to be found in Hungarian folk art. The title of the exhibition is Sign-Transit, reflecting on an infinitely moving, ever and dynamically changing system of signs, associations of symbols the understanding which may lead the viewer to the cognitive reception of the works by Bartl.

In addition to showing the most significant artistic periods in Bartl's oeuvre, the exhibition also reviews the ideas of the artists consistently under construction that link the various periods. With the exhibition, we again took hold of one of the characteristic figures of the Szentendre art scene, who managed to renew painting transitions in town.

The material consists of paintings from the Ferenczy Museum, as well as a number of private collections, and also some from the artist's own collection. Bartl's oeuvre is characterised by great variegation, with all the wall carpets, prints, statues, glass mosaics etc. We also show the film that was made on him in 2012. The catalogue that accompanies the exhibition contains studies, the biography of Bartl, the list of his exhibitions, and one significant work from every one of his artistic periods.

The curator of the exhibition is: the art historian Katalin Kopin