1947
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DEZIDER TÓTH | MONOGRAMISTA T.D. (*1947, Výčapy-Opatovce)
Entering the visual art scene at the beginning of the 1970s and during the times of Normalization, Dezider Tóth was one of the initiators and regular participants in unofficial fine art activities (he was the youngest participant in Sikora’s Otvorený atelier [Open Studio]). As a conceptual artist, he combined the inspirations of action art, land-art and visual poetry in an original way. He understood art as open communication and a game – and it became for him a synonym for creativity without boundaries, a way of understanding the surrounding reality, the means for spontaneous and thought out identification with the world and the creation of his new visual metaphor, which can be seen and discovered anywhere. He was particularly interested in expressing the ethical relationships of man and nature; the themes of wounding and protection from wounding and the protection of the environment of our lives as such were predominant in his work for a long period of time. He works with texts, words associated with poetic ideas more than terms of conceptual art or the art of ideas. He is active in the field of text art, visual scores, open air objects and actions; he has also documented his conceptual work in the medium of photography. Since 1991 he has mainly created installations; the most famous are his mural variations of shelves with manipulated books. He is a member of the group A-R (Avance-Retard, 1989), whose members have analytically surveyed classical media, or developed and commented on a specific visual form of concept since the end of the 1970s.
He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava from 1966 to 1972 under Prof. P. Matejka, where he today works as professor at the Department of Painting and Other Media. He also works in the area of book and graphic design. Since 1997 he has worked under the pseudonym Monogramista T.D.; he also publishes under the name Andro Verdan. In 2011, together with Boris Meluš and the OKO publishing house, he compiled and published Monogramista T.D. Nie som autor, som metafora.[ Monogramista T.D. I am Not an Author, I am a Metaphor]. He lives in Brno and Bratislava.
International exhibitions: Artists from Central and Eastern Europe, Mattress Gallery, Pittsburgh (1995); Body and the East. From the 1960 to the Present, Moderna Galerija, Lubljana (1998) , and others.
Representation in collections: Mattres Factory, Pittsburgh; Städtische Museen, Heilbronn; Pécsi galéria, Pécs; Ulmer Museum, Ulm; Art Museum, Olomouc; National Gallery in Prague; Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava; Bratislava City Gallery; regional galleries in the Slovak Republic and private collections, and others.
