Ilka Gedő: Pensive Self-Portrait I, from Folder 57, 1949, pencil, coal, paper, 570 x 455 mm Reproduced: István Hajdu-Dávid Bíró: The Art of Ilka Gedő, Budapest, Gondolat, 2003, Image 42, Contemporary Collection, Inv. No. MM. 2003. 20

This drawing shows the creator and the created and the mystery. How can this be possible? In his letter sent to Wassily Kandinsky Arnold Schönberg points out, “We must recognise that we are surrounded by mystery, and we must be brave enough to confront these mysteries without cowardly searching for the «solution». It is important that our souls should not try to solve these mysteries but to disentangle them. In the course of this process, not a solution must be born, but a new code and a method for code-breaking. This method is in itself without any value, yet it provides material for the creation of new mysteries. Namely, mystery is nothing else but the mirror image of the inexplicable. However, once we regard the inexplicable possible, then we approach God, because then we no longer demand to understand God. In this case, we no longer interpret God with our intellect, we no longer censure or reject God, because we are no longer capable of merging God with the human error that is our
lucidity."