Opening door Bert van Meggelen, ceramic collector, chairman of SKPD, curator of Rotterdam Cultural Capital 2001, and former director of the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture RAvB,
on Saturday, September 6 at 4:00 PM in the presence of the artist.
The solo exhibition of Márta Nagy (Budapest, 1954) at Galerie Terra Delft showcases a body of work that is rooted in the Hungarian ceramic tradition while simultaneously engaging with a contemporary, international visual language. Trained under Imre Schrammel and working for the Herstellers Herend and Zsolnay, Nagy combines artisanal perfection with pronounced artistic autonomy. Her role as a professor of ceramic art further emphasizes her significance as a bridge figure between tradition and innovation.
Since the 1990s, Nagy has evolved from decorative plates with repetitive floral motifs, where folk art and modernity engage in a subtle dialogue, to sculptural installations that focus on abstraction, tactility, and material dualities. Her signature is characterized by the fields of tension that she evokes: between glossy porcelain and rough stoneware, between earthy weight and ethereal lightness, between decorative refinement and sculptural monumentality. This dialectic aligns with broader trends in 20th and 21st-century ceramics, where artists increasingly question the boundaries between utility and autonomous art.
Márta Nagy's work can thus be seen as a quest for balance between polarities: raw and refined, heavy and light, national heritage and international abstraction. It is precisely in this tension that the strength of her oeuvre is contained: modest in size, but powerful in its cultural and artistic resonance.
