Viktória Pintérné Tóth
Art Studies
2006–2007 Corvin Drawing School
2007–2012 Sopron, Institute of Applied Arts, BA and MA in Architectural Design
I have been drawing since I was very small. I have always loved learning, and I am fascinated by the logic of things. It may sound slightly unusual, but I was always good at mathematics and physics — although biology was, above all, what truly captivated me. These subjects only went well for me, however, if I was allowed to draw during class. One notebook collected the lessons, another — for the sake of notebook inspections — collected the drawings.
From primary school onward, I attended the drawing workshop at the Pataky Cultural Centre for many years, where Valmira Máthé encouraged my artistic wanderings. It was only years later that I realised what solid foundations I had received there.
At first, I wanted to become a biologist. We went on countless hikes, and my mother enthusiastically photographed plants — which meant that I was set free on the forest floor. Who would have the glory of spotting the plant we were trying to find? We spent endless hours examining meadows and leaf litter, and traces of this have remained with me. Mosses, mushrooms, lichens are my eternal loves, and I know many plants.
When I outgrew biology — or at least realised that I did not want to spend my life lying in the grass doing fieldwork — I quickly had to find something that was both acceptable as a profession at home and attractive to me. Something involving drawing. I myself did not believe I wanted to become a graphic designer: that was “just” drawing, something I did every day, something that came naturally, and therefore did not seem special. Foolish teenage thinking. So I went into architecture.
But since mathematics and physics came easily to me, I felt I should choose something that still offered a challenge. This is how I became an architectural designer — in a programme where, in part, I could also study alongside graphic designers.
Why Linocut?
It was at university that I first encountered traditional printmaking techniques. In Márton Juhász’s university workshop, and in the small printing workshop run by Dávid Petró at the Forestry Museum in Sopron, I first tried copper engraving and aquatint, bookbinding and flexographic printing. I think this is where I became infected.
Although I never truly fell in love with etching, I was fascinated by the idea that a person could create books through their own strength, knowledge and hands. At that point, I was still holding on to my identity as an architect.
Linocut is my liberation.
Towards the end of seven years of professional practice, I felt that I could no longer drag concrete, load-bearing structures and construction layers along with me. At the same time, I was tormented by doubt: among so many talented graphic artists, what place could there be for someone half-determined, half-professional like me? With the encouragement of my colleagues at the time, I began working with lino.
When I work with linocut, the doubt disappears from me. The material holds my attention. The technique is multilayered and has diverse, far-reaching traditions. Not a day goes by without my devoting time to lino. If I cannot print or carve, I watch videos, read websites, and try to absorb the knowledge of others.
Another reason I am drawn to lino is that it is easier to take with me, and it is less restrained than etching. I have sketched lino blocks while commuting by train, and carved stamps in a camper van, beneath mountain peaks, while camping by a lake. All you need is a piece of lino and a scalpel or carving tool. I carved my first stamp from an eraser with a utility knife, and made my first print with a wooden spoon. Almost every element of the process can be improvised if something is not at hand.
Since then, I have become the owner of a professional set of carving tools and, at the moment, two presses, which have expanded enormously what I am able to achieve on paper. Alongside all the improvisation, this medium also has a wonderful technical side, which offers challenges of its own. Both sides of my brain are covered.
Where Am I Going with Lino?
Deeper.
For as long as I can remember, everything I did for my own joy somehow had to be justified. What is its legitimacy? What does it bring me, what does it bring my community, my family, what is its direct use?
My husband has helped me enormously in growing out of this apologetic way of existing. My vow with lino is that it should serve my own joy — and for me, creation itself is the source of joy. I want to learn everything I can, to master the language of the technique, and if I ever have the opportunity, I would like one day to teach it to others as well. I would also very much like, in time, to find a connection with the wider Hungarian printmaking community. I think I am on the right path.
How Do I Choose My Subjects — What Is Wilderness to Me?
Most of my themes are simply biology. This, too, is a circle turning back into itself.
I grew up on a housing estate, dreaming of gardens, parks, expeditions and wilderness. I devoured books about unusual animals and extraordinary places. When I absolutely did not know what to do with myself, I set out to build my own sparrow trap, so that I, too, could catch and observe a sparrow — because pigeons were too large and would knock over the box. Naturally, I did not succeed.
I collected seemingly special mosses and seed-grown saplings from the playground to plant at home in balcony boxes. I germinated acorns, hoping to grow them into dwarf oak trees. I begged pieces of fern root from a forester acquaintance, collected bark, and tried to press papyrus from sedge leaves.
As a child, this was a compromise, instead of oryxes, harpy eagles, okapis, whales and orchids, instead of enormous lianas and giant pines as tall as apartment blocks.
As an adult, with greater calm, I see that these living beings and these communities of life, which are capable of living alongside us in the city, are treasures. They are handholds, a kind of umbilical cord to nature, a promise one can cling to: that we have not become completely detached, that even in such a loud, hard and cold environment, nature is still capable of living with us.
For me, this is wilderness: the gentle triumph of the will to survive.