‘Hungarians joined European Christian culture one thousand years ago. The adoption of Christianity entailed a change in our way of life, and the Church played a crucial role in this adjustment. After converting, the once nomadic, pastoral people built churches and monasteries, which were decorated by masters from home and abroad and furnished with beautiful devotional objects crafted by talented artists. Our country warmly welcomed foreigners: Benedictine, Cistercian, and Franciscan monks as well as Italian, German, French and Byzantine missionaries, from whom our people gained knowledge of the Christian beliefs and acquired the power of faith.
The Church not only provided our people with faith, churches, and outstanding historical figures, but also passed on its comprehensive knowledge to us and taught us the art of renewal. Enemy forces may have ravaged our country, but to little effect, for the building of both churches and souls always followed in the wake of destruction. The Catholic Church is a part of our everyday lives; this was the case in the past, in the days of persecution, and today, in a democracy too. Entrusted with the task - as is its mission - of delivering the good news, the Church has made its presence felt in both families and society alike.
Our hope is that this exhibit will provide visitors with a glimpse into the thousand-year history of a country. Our art bears the marks of a people with a unique culture while at the same time reflecting the style of the various periods. You, who have arrived from all parts of the world, whether Catholic or not, will be able to understand the exhibit without having any knowledge of our language. As you view our art, you will recognize its symbolic messages, wonder at its individuality, and discover its similarities to familiar monuments from other Christian countries. The explanation for this is simple: Christianity binds us together. The Church provided the most important setting for one thousand years of interconnections between European and Hungarian art. This cultural link is proof that our nation will be a worthy companion to those integrating into the Europe of the future.’
This positive engagement between faith and art would seem to have been reversed (defensive and exclusive) if recent reports like Hari Kunzru’s article in The New Yorker claiming that across Hungary the cultural scene is now in a state of crisis are correct:
‘The current Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, has rebranded Fidesz, once a liberal youth party (with the vintage countercultural slogan "Don’t trust anyone over thirty-five") as a right-wing Christian nationalist organization. After Fidesz won a large majority in national elections in 2010, Orbán set about remaking the country, changing the constitution in ways that observers allege have removed important checks on the power of government … The new constitution "recognizes the role of Christianity in preserving nationhood," and art that is deemed blasphemous or "anti-national" is now the target of a full-blown campaign of suppression … In the art world, an organization called the Hungarian Academy of Arts (M.M.A.), founded as a private association in 1992, has recently been made into a public body and given control of the lion’s share of the national cultural budget. They will now select the directors of museums and administer prizes … The eighty-year-old head of the M.M.A., György Fekete, has said that, in addition to artistic excellence, "unambiguous national sentiment" is required for membership in his organization … He has pledged to prevent blasphemy in state institutions, citing an exhibition at the Mucsarnok called "What Is It To Be Hungarian?" (which had sections on "stereotypes" and "conflicts"), as an example of the kind of show that will no longer be presented. In a TV interview, he stated that Hungary is "built on Christian culture; there is no need for constant, perpetual provocation."
Kunzru quotes George Szirtes as saying, "the country I have loved and admired … every part of it is being dismantled and banished." In an article for the Guardian Szirtes wrote: "Hungary has produced great artists, musicians, architects, film directors and writers. Some of them are still alive. The government wishes to cut them out of the heart of culture"
Some of these great artists have, in the modern period, contributed to the earlier more open and inclusive engagement between faith and art:
From the 1880s Bertalan Székely started to paint murals. His most famous murals can be found in Matthias Church, in the Cathedral of Pécs, in the Budapest Opera, and in the Kecskemét Town Hall. A whole generation of painters can be found among his students, including Béla Iványi-Grünwald, János Vaszary, Aladár Körösfõi-Kriesch and Sándor Nagy.
The Gödöllõ Colony of Artists, outside Budapest, became attractive for artists and Hungarian Art Nouveau in the first two decades of the 20th century, as a rival of the Nagybánya Colony of Artists and later the Kecskemét Colony of Artists. The Gödöllõ colony's spirit was composed of Tolstoyan and Christian-Anarchist ideas which had come to them via the philosopher Henrik Jenõ Schmitt in Diód. The members of the Gödöllo Colony of Artists also took the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as an ideal to follow, as well as the earlier 'model', the Nazarenes. Of all the artists’ colonies inspired by the ideals of John Ruskin and William Morris, the one at Gödöllo came closest to fulfilling Arts and Crafts principles.
Aladar Körösfoi-Kriesch, the leading figure at Gödöllo, wrote On Ruskin and the English Pre-Raphaelites, in which he outlined the role the artist should play in reforming society. Körösfoi-Kriesch (painter, sculptor - ceramics, applied artist and illustrator) and other founders of the Gödöllo colony strongly believed that making and using handcrafted folk objects had a transforming power in people’s lives. The colony's Golden Age was ended with Körösfõi's death in 1920, although Sándor Nagy and the Remsey family mantained it.
Sándor Nagy worked with Körösfõi-Kriesch on the mural paintings in Temesvár seminary (today Timiõoara, Romania, demolished), but he painted in Gödöllõ alone after Körösfõi's death including symbolic frescoes on religious subject matters. He painted frescos in Csorna (1942-43, demolished) and in Budapest (Refectory and chapel of St. Imre Parish Church, Budapest; Regnum Marianum, Budapest; Pacsirtamezõ, Magyarok Nagyasszonya Church; Chapel of the Maglódi Hospital, 1932), but his masterpiece is the Pesterzsébet St. Elisabeth Church (1937-1941).
The Gödöllo Colony of Artists was also influenced by Symbolism as well as Art Nouveau, Plein-air and late Romanticism. Symbolism became elemental in the oeuvres of Lajos Gulácsy and Tivadar Kosztka Csontváry. János Vaszary's painting entitled Golden Age and István Csók's Biblical topics and subjects taken from Asia and from 'dark Symbolism' are also linked to Symbolism.
Through Károly Ferenczy the Nagybánya Colony of Artists was able to change the nature of Hungarian painting. His religious experience of nature and lyrical sensibility inspired huge compositions under the influence of his experiences at Nagybánya. This experience was deeper and more complicated than could be rendered with a simple natural motif or the cutting out of the view. This is why the otherwise atheist Ferenczy chose biblical themes. These lost their historical approach and became the instruments that rendered the experience of nature for the artist. Sermon on the Mount begins a series of paintings in this new style. It was followed by several visionary scenes, which were dominated by deep tones, colours appearing among green nuances: The Three Magi, Joseph sold into Slavery by his Brothers, Isaac's sacrifice. The experience was evoked by nature, but the simple view was transcribed into a vision by Ferenczy and in this way he transcended the describing naturalism. The inner emotional world and the view are bound together in these pictures.
János Schadl studied under Károly Ferenczy at the Budapest Academy of Fine Arts for two years. Breaking off his studies, he joined the circle of the Activists and worked in a spirit shared with the artists of the avant-garde periodical MA. His rapturous devotion and pious enthusiasm sometimes tinted his religious Expressionism and Cubistic form construction with a naive but highly unique hue. His symbolic biblical compositions and Cubistic townscapes elevated his art of the 1910s and 1920s to a higher level.
Gyula Derkovits drew the theme of his Last Supper from the Bible, and placed the human figures, forced into rectangular forms, in front of an arcaded landscape rendered in expressionist style. The early Derkovits artworks bear the footprints of the cubo-expressionism of the 1910s, while the use of bluish-reddish colours and the cubistic form creation show the influence of [Janos] Kmetty's art. Kmetty's rigorously symmetrical picture entitled Sermon on the Mount depicts a biblical story as well. Pécs Artist Circle member Henrik Stefán's painting titled The Samaritan also draws its theme from the Bible. This New Testament parable inspired a number of other contemporary artists: from among the neo-classicist youths who had visited Nagybánya, Dávid Jándi and Vince Korda worked out their own adaptations of the story, and there are also pictures carrying this same theme from Ernõ Jeges who had worked in the Bicske colony of artists and from one of the most outstanding representatives of Croatian neo-classicism, Sava Sumanovic, as well.
A pupil of Gyula Rudnay, István Csók and János Vaszary at the Budapest Academy of Fine Arts between 1924 and 1926, Vladimir Szabó finished his studies with Ágoston Benkhard some ten years later. In 1931-1934 he was on scholarship to Rome, which left its imprint on his choice of religious subjects, in the precision of drawing and the richness in realistic detail. Yet his painting cannot be labelled realistic in that realism was only one component of his pictures based on a profound insight into human character. His interest in visionary ideals played just as great a role in his work as his flair for the grotesque, not to mention his vein of story-telling.
Lajos Vajda was a pupil of István Csók at the Budapest Academy of Fine Arrts and also worked in Lajos Kassák's workshop. In 1930-1934 he lived in Paris where he got acquainted with Surrealism as well as the oustanding works of the Russian Realist film. The two influences prompted him to create his dramatic photo-montages of the great cataclysms of mankind, war, hunger, armed violence and abject misery. At home he lived alterately in Budapest and Szentendre, but also spent much time in Szigetmonostor, collecting folklore motives. He wanted to immerse himself in ancient cultures and this ambition was bolstered by the icons of the Serbian churches of Szentendre and by folk art. He incorporated the simple objects of everyday life as well as Hungarian and Jewish religious motifs into his pictures. He developed his style which he labelled "constructive-surrealistic schematics" from this assemblage of motives. He superimposed motifs drawn with a single linear sweep, presenting symbolic-spiritual contents viewed from above, in an ethereal floating manner. His icons and icon-like self-portraits were also made around this time and serve as timeless representations of faith and perseverance.
After studies in the Art Academy of Prague, Béla Kontuly studied with István Réti in Budapest. In 1928-1930 he was on scholarship to Rome. His style was shaped by the New Objectivity of Novecento both on the canvas and in mural painting. He decorated several churches and ecclesiastic buildings, while, in small-scale genres, his portraits deserve attention.
The extraordinary versatility of Béla Kondor who studied painting and graphic art at the Academy of Fine Arts is apparent in the fact that apart from using various graphic techniques he made paintings, wrote poetry and prose, explored new methods in photography and was an excellent organist. Besides integrating avant-garde trends, his art was able to build on the great traditions of the past in such a way that the stylistic, thematic and iconographic motifs were actually merged in a unique system of expression guided by the sovereign instructions of the artist. He rendered new interpretation to common symbols in his efforts to provide answers to the challenges of the age, in an art that created a personal mythology. Flying and soaring are common themes for Kondor, and these contributed to the creation of symbols appearing in the form of insects (Wasp King, 1963), birds and flying structures (The Artificial Cricket's Take-Off, 1960). He changed the symbols of classic and Christian mythology into the sources of ambivalent notions. The angels, the cherubs, the geniuses of creation and destruction are the strangest figures of the Kondor-iconography. His angel figures, his saints and biblical heroes reveal the Good-Evil polarity in man by exploring the temptation of man. In his pictures of Christ he is preoccupied with the contemporary message of the crucifixion (Iron-sheet Corpus, 1964; Christ on the Cross, 1971). The changing face of man existing in this earthly sphere and the tragic roles played in the 'human comedy' are often displayed in contrast with the angels of the celestial sphere, by flashing up ambiguous interpretations and ambivalent meanings. The key to the interpretation of his self-portrait series (Somebody's Self-portrait) showing a disharmony built on asymmetry, is the attitude of facing the irrational. Of his wall-pictures, his panel painting placed in Margaret Island, Budapest (1968) depicting the legend of Saint Margaret is his most harmonic work of art. His monumental oil painting entitled 'Procession of the Saints into Town' (1972) considered to be a pinnacle in his oeuvre was also one designed to be a wall-piece, however it eventually ended up in a museum, because the party that had ordered the painting rejected it. This work of art that offers a variety of interpretations to the spectator and reflects the grotesque and tragic view of history and philosophising world perception of the artist accompanied by ironical half-tones, can be regarded as a synthesis of Kondor's art.
Barna Basilides began his studies in graphics at the Hungarian National School of Applied Arts in 1920 before going on to secure a diploma at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in 1925, in which year he also departed on a study tour of Italy. That is when the Society of Spiritual Artists, of which he was a founding member, was formed.
Works such as the Antique Legend, Moses, Genius and Golgotha, prepared during the last period of his creative career, show that Jenõ Kerényi turned towards the world of myths and legends, and themes from the Bible. The dramatic and tense sensation found in these works was produced by a deep sense of thought, vibrant forms, and a torn formulation of the surfaces of the works.
From the thirties onwards professional respect for both the expertise and talent of Pál C. Molnár led to a string of prizes (Monza, Warsaw, Milan, Padua, Rome) and commissions (a winged altar in the church at Városmajor, another in Battony, panel pictures in the Golf Hotel, a fresco in St Ann's Church, an altar fresco in the Farkasrét Cemetery chapel, and so on). He became the embodiment of the intellectual movement known later as the School of Rome, and continued his activity in church art after the war (his most important work in this art-form was the winged altar in the parish church of the Inner City in Pest, 1948), as well as producing many secular panel paintings (portraits, scenes with horses, landscapes etc.), in a style awash with increasingly bizarre and surreal features.
In 1958 Édition Labergerie published the Jerusalem Bible with more than a thousand of Endre Bálint's illustrations, and this helped him in developing his typical late artistic style. From 1959 onward he painted one after the other his most valued paintings, including the Miraculous Fishing (1960), the Dream in the Public Park (1960), I Walked Here Sometime I-II. (1960). These works of art can be classified as the representatives of late surrealism. In them familiar recollection-fragment clichés of nostalgia-imbued childhood and the past, all positioned in never-seen internal landscapes are mingled according to the 'logic' of human dreaming and remembrance with unknown, mysterious and often frightening figures and shapes, in order to become players of a story for which there are no human words to express.
Marta Jakobovits is a professional ceramic artist, educated at the Academy for Visual Arts from Cluj. She got her doctorate degree (DLA – Doctor of Liberal Arts) at the University of Arts and Design in Budapest. She works as a free-lanced artist and gives lectures about ceramics and paper-art at universities as invited artist. She is member of different professional organisations: Romanian Artists Union, the Barabas Miklos Guild, the Hungarian Artists Union, the Christian Artists Europe, Rotterdam, the European Academy of Culture and the Arts from Rotterdam. She has works in museums in Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and in private and public collections from different countries. Beside her one-man-shows she had participated at a lot of international and national exhibitions, symposiums and conferences in Germany, France, Holland, Hungary, Poland, Croatia, Slovakia, Romania, Italy, Canada, Finland and Japan.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
