exerpt from: Chicago Sun-Times/ Show Case. “A Snapshot of Chicago’s Art Community, Oct.14, 2005
My feet ground to a halt, for example, in front of Hungarian-born painter Zsofia Otvos' "Quietly Breathing," an expressionistic and vaguely sinister portrait of a slender, somnolent young woman with arms and hands oddly distended, her right shoulder self-protectively drawn up in a way that's both painful and poignant. The olive-drab cast of her limbs and face recalls Toulouse-Lautrec at his most deliberately ghastly -- except that Otvos' sensual handling of acrylic paint, laid on here in wet-looking daubs, is positively luscious; the incongruity makes it thrilling.
image on left: "Quitely Breathing"