Gyergyádesz László, ifj.: „Csavargó”. Mednyánszky László élete és művészete (Kecskemét, 2007)
Vázlatkönyvi rajz - Beszélgető parasztok (kát. 32.) Sketch-book drawing - Talking Farmers (cat. 32) 35 artists who worked according to the lessons of Barbizon, especially Schindler, the founder of the Plankenberg School had a great effect on Mednyánszky and we can draw a parallel, less in practice, more in theory (see the so called synaesthetic procedure). ’The sensitive observer of the nature primarily never relied on his/her senses; the most important fact was the creating-turning over act of Orpheus. What can you turn the accustomed face of the landscape through the tools of the mood, so that some strange look should show through - this was the alchemical starting point of Mednyánszky’s painting. (...) He ordered moods to the elements and he associated tessitura and colours to them.’ One of the most important sources of Med- nyánszky’s synaesthetic-associating way of thinking is his diary entry from 1900: ‘The fascination. Something in the painting, that fascinates me. Something like the “philosophers’ stone”. It has been chasing me more or less since spring. That is what 1 wanted to start now. I wanted to get to the bottom of it. I was examining it from different points of view. a) Like something what is based on optical disillusions. b) Like something what is based on the knowledge of expressions and movements. c) Like something what affects others invisibly and in an occult way under the visible layers. (...) Beautiful figures which are typical and full of life. They have three types. 1. The allegorical-philosophical, fantastic, romantic and dramatically. 2. The idyllic, realistic. 3. The study-like portrait, very realistic. The second one equals the youth and the morning, the pulsing power. The third one follows the several experimenting and searching like a beneficial and refreshing reaction. The first one is the broadest field on which the things which are not born yet are slumbering. In Mednyánszky’s artistic activity the landscapes and the compositions with figures were of equal value even ‘in their content they belong together and especially since the end of the century they have mutually influenced each other.’ Nevertheless the figurái works were less known among his contemporaries. His landscape painting, which is hardly represented in the collection of the Kecskemét Gallery, was summarised by Ernő Kállai, Mednyánszky’s most significant monograph writer in the following way which has been valid up till today: ‘Nature was not only the master of his art, but he was in his element in it. Nature was its subject, it inspired his visions. At the beginning he was connected to the nature painting school of Barbizon, later encouraged by the works of naturalism and impressionism he learnt the colourful refractions of the open space. He learnt how to observe the phenomena of the nature as a labyrinthine of loose colour patches pervaded by light and air. However, his development as a painter that led to more and more differentiated and freer treatment of colours served only the aim of peeling off the materialism and everyday reality of the objects so that their inner, intellectual seed could brighten up from behind the outward cover. For Mednyánszky nature served as a slogan of painting, similarly to Ferenczy, Hollósy, Thorma, Fényes, lványi Grünwald, the masters of Nagybánya, Szolnok and Kecskemét. However, while for the others nature was a realistic optical object of finite extent, for Mednyánszky it was rather the medium of transmitting mystical statements, a bridge from the world of the senses to the empire of transcendental, from the finite to the infinite.
