Gyula Kalko Bio Artist and conservator Gyula (Julius) Kalko received his art training at the Academy of Fine Arts and the Academy of Applied Arts in Budapest, Hungary. He studied drawing and painting under Professor Jeno Barcsay, the world-renown author of the authoritative book, Anatomy for the Artist. At the Academy of Applied Arts he studied graphic arts and conservation and received diplomas from both disciplines in 1970 and 1973 respectively. Mr. Kalko began his painting series, The Circle of History, in 1992. He appropriates details of old master paintings selected for their contemporary relevance, which he uses as a means to draw parallels between the past and present of the human condition. The work deals with contemporary social and philosophical issues through the mirror of the historical past. It also scrutinizes formal visual arts concerns regarding context and representation and post-modern attitudes to painting. The conceptual division between past and present is achieved through the use of a black and white simulated x-ray image, while the full colour sections emulate Western painting' s mimetic tradition. Throughout the 1970s, Mr. Kalko worked as a versatile and highly successful self-employed artist in Hungary. He worked internationally as an exhibition designer in Cairo, Beirut, Leipzig, Sao Paulo, Vienna, London and Paris, and has many book illustrations and award winning posters to his credit. As with most progressive artists in Hungary at the time, he concentrated on drawing and artistic graphic work, and he worked as a mural painter on special projects, including a major commission in Moscow with professor Barcsay. Mr.Kalko has exhibited his fine art and commercial work widely, both in solo and group exhibitions in Hungary and abroad, and is a winner of several awards. In 1977 he won first and second awards at the Budapest Publicity Exhibition, first award at the Hungarian Trademark Biennale, and third award at the prestigious Warsaw Poster Biennale. He represented Hungary in solo exhibitions at drawing biennale shows in Leipzig, Dresden and Warsaw, and was featured in group exhibitions in Paris (1976), Venice (1977), and Warsaw (1977). Gyula Kalko moved to Montreal in 1982, and consequently to Toronto in 1984, where he has continued his artistic activities as an illustrator, and scenic designer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Since 1985 he has operated "Artrestore" a fine art conservation studio, and divides his activities between his painting and conservation work. Selections from The Circle of History series have been exhibited in the exhibition, myth city saga: Urban Landscape and the Permanent Collection in 1999 at the Art Gallery of Mississauga, and in the exhibition Destined to Repeat at the DeLeon White Gallery in 2001, along with works by Carl Beam, J.Lynn Campbell and Badanna Zack. Mr. Kalko' s Circle of History was featured in the fall issue of Canadian Art magazine (Fall 1997) in an article written by Douglas Ord, and on the Concordia University Department of Art History web site compiled by Dr. Loren Lerner under the title, "Canadian Artists of Eastern European Origin ." Gyula Kalko shows his paintings at Gallery Moos, Toronto. The Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art The Canadian Art Database