The Kende family arrived in the U.S as refugees, in late 1956. En route, children were offered welcoming gifts. Given only a couple of minutes to choose, Ivan, ten years old, picked a small notebook, a  pencil and a small box with a picture of a truck on it. Finally landing in New York City the following day, restless from a very long plane ride, on an out of the blue impulse, he sketched a copy of the picture. He has been drawing ever since.

 

​His early realistic styles eventually evolved into ethereal imagery. Around 2005, the sense of the ethereal and photos of Neolithic cave paintings art inspired a totally unexpected direction. The coarse, tactile feel of their pigments on the rough cave surfaces became the creative spring board for his new vision. In these works, Kende seeks a sense of the magical and the primordial. His quest for symbolical imagery explores metaphysical concepts, with materials those ancient cave artists had primitive versions of.

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Ancient art forms and wisdom traditions have become the source as well as the intent of Kende’s imagery.