Artist:
Judit Szendrei
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Judit Szendrei lives and works in Debrecen, Hungary and in London.
As a creative philatelist-cum-Pop Collagist, Judit often works collaboratively with other members of her family to create intricate papiers collés mosaics made entirely from repurposed stamps.
The painstaking process of assembling thousands of stamps involves meticulous planning: each stamp is steeped, dried and sorted; an outline of the design transferred to the support; then – using a constantly evolving technique incorporating folding, cutting and printing – the image is slowly constructed as each individual stamp is laid into the composition. The repurposing of seemingly infinite accumulations of stamps have been acquired from diverse sources including the Philately Department of the Hungarian Post, the Hungarian Army’s Aron Gabor Stamp Collectors Group, and the famous stamp collection of Csaba Sutoczky.
Judit’s preference for methodical, system-driven image making has affinities with the repetition, rhythm and regularity of Pop Art or minimalism, but her approach is more aligned with early 1990s photomosaics or the making of Mandala’s in Eastern religions.
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For many years, Judit worked professionally as an economist in her local town of Debrecen and, having held a fascination for stamps since her childhood, began making stamp mosaics in 2015. She held her first exhibition in 2018, showing 35 works to wide acclaim in her local town and to audiences far and wide. Such was the success of the exhibition that instead of running for two weeks as originally scheduled, it was extended for two months.
In 2020, one of Judit Szendrei’s works was presented to Pope Francis, and now hangs in Vatican City. Her work is also included in European public collections and has been featured in many exhibitions including: God Save the Queen, Culture Trust Luton (2022);Towards the Light, Palazzo Falconieri, Rome, Italy (2021); Picasso’s Muses, Debrecen, Kerek-Jaszovics Collection (2021); Star Shows of the Road, Budapest, Ungár Aniko’s Collection (2021); Noe’s Barge, Debrecen, School of Immanuel Foundation (2021); The Spring is Here!, Debrecen, Kerek-Jaszovics Collection (2020); Magician in the Eden, Budapest, Hungarikon Collection (2020); Together with Christ, Hungary, the public house of the Greek Catholic Church (2020); Stampex International, Islington, London (2019); Taormina As I View It, Budapest Stamp Museum (2019); Bicycle, Dutch Embassy, Budapest (2018); The Royal Residence, Tirana, Albania (2015); Balloon of History, Debrecen, Lusztig Collection (2015).