Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 25. (Budapest, 2007)
Events 2006
Hungarian Drawing Teachers and the College for Higher Education in the Visual Arts, an exhibition was staged by Béla Zombori, associate professor at the Department for Teacher Training at the Moholy- Nagy University of Art and Design. Entitled ‘Viewpoints’ and on show to the public from 17 March to 9 April, it was opened by Péter Pósfai, director-general of the National Centre for Examinations and Assessment in General Education. Sixteen artists - graphic artist János Anti Szabó, artist Márton Barabás, tapestry artist Beáta Bocz, painter György Csaba Borgó, painter Tamás Galambos, textile artist Erzsébet Katona Szabó, graphic artist Zoltán Kecskés, graphic artist Ilona Kiss, textile artist Krisztina Kókay, graphic artist György Olajos, graphic artist István Orosz, tapestry artist Flóra Remsey, textile artist Kati Székely, sculptor Miklós Szőcs ‘TUT, textile artist Mária T. Doromby, and writer Tibor Wehner - organised a group exhibition entitled ‘Horror Vacui’, consisting of works they had created in this spirit. Dénes Nagy, a professor of mathematics, opened this exhibition on 31 March. The show closed on 24 June, Midsummer’s Day, with a joint exercise by the artists exhibiting: in the presence of the public they created a new ‘horror vacui’ creation, continuing each other’s work on an ‘unending’ roll of paper. For the exhibition, a catalogue was published by the Gödöllő New Art Foundation. Edited by Erzsébet Katona Szabó, this contained a short bibliography (in Hungarian and in English) of the artists participating and also photographs of the works displayed. The catalogue ran to forty pages, excluding Tibor Wehner’s introduction. In 1959, nearly fifty years ago, the textile artist Emília Pájer graduated from the Department of Weaving at Budapest’s Academy of Applied Arts. Her work as an artist and as a teacher was recognised in 2004, when she was awarded the Noémi Ferency Prize. At her exhibition entitled ‘My Life, My Textiles’, which was on show from 12 July until 20 August, she displayed textiles for home use that she had made herself and also her latest creations combining special textiles and strips of newspaper. This exhibition was opened by the painter Tamás Konok. A booklet containing colour pictures was published for the exhibition. It contained an introduction by György Fekete, interior designer and emeritus professor. Zoltán Bohus, holder of the Munkácsy Prize and the Artist of Merit award, is an outstanding figure in contemporary Hungarian glass art, one who is known internationally also. Works by him can be found not just in public spaces and collections in Hungary, but also in many important foreign collections. For forty years now, he has not only taught successive generations of glass artists at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (the citadel of applied arts training in Hungary), but has also visited artists’ colonies, symposia and summer schools in France, Germany, Britain, and the USA as a lecturer and as a teacher. Since the 1970s he has exhibited regularly in solo and in group exhibitions. Galleries of contemporary art in Hungary are happy to include works by him in their exhibitions, as are those in London, Paris, New York, and Tokyo. In many great cities of the world, the public has already been enthralled by his creations. These are works of fine art made using the laminated and burnished techniques of so-called ‘cold glass’ in which he analyses the connections between space, light and glass. ‘Light - Spaces. My First Forty Years’, organised by Dr. Vera Varga and on show in the Museum of Applied Arts from 30 August until 17 September, 171
