György Jovánovics’s statue Man was first displayed in 1968 at the original Iparterv (Industrial Design) exhibition. This was a period in Central European art that produced radical, innovative approaches that flew in the face of official socialist cultural policies. His novel sculptural experiments led him to choose plaster rather than stone or wood as his basic material and frontal compositions rather than more complicated sculptures in the round.The life-size head of his statue Man was modeled faithfully on a classical Greek study and a pattern of Bourbon lilies trails across the face, continuing in the knit pattern of the plaster netting on his head. The figure is clothed in toga-like apparel with textile scarves wrapped around his neck and waist.Jovánovics intentionally used ephemeral and fragile materials, such as plaster. Plaster is used as processing material in sculpture, namely to make preliminary studies. The choice to use a material vulnerable to the passage of time refers to the fragility and transience of man.
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