Kovács Zita - Bálint Attila : Az Éber-Emlékház. Id. Éber Sándor, ifj. Éber Sándor és Éber Anna művészete - A Bajai Türr István Múzeum kiadványai 28. (Baja, 1999)
THE ÉBER MEMORIAL HOUSE Baja is a small town on the left bank of the river Danube in Northern Bácska. The Danube forks under the town; one of its two branches, the mildly bending Sugovica separates Petőfi Island from the rest of the town. During the early 19th century, the noise of water-mills and the hammering of ship builders commonly broke the silence. Large grain barges carried Bácska's wheat to Vienna. Baja's multiethnic (Hungarian, German and Bunjevac, or Catholic Croat) population were prosperous land owners, excellent traders and skilled artisans, who, through hard work, created a pleasant life for all the people of the town. In the second year of the 20th century, a young and enthusiastic art teacher and painter, Sándor Éber (1878-1947) settled in the town. His life, his art, and his diverse cultural activities were very much part of Baja's cultural history during the first half of the 20th century. The Éber House, Ébers home and studio in Jókai street, was one of the centers of cultural life in Baja. Within the intimate walls, every memory is still vibrantly alive as a piece of reality. Today, if the visitor walks down Baja's narrow, peacefully meandering Jókai street, the Éber Memorial House, with its yard overgrown with ivy, will invite him to see the treasured heritage of three painters, Sándor Éber, Sr. and his two children, Sándor Éber, Jr. and Anna Éber. Besides the paintings, drawings and sculptures, this house is also home to the Ébers' invaluable collection of documents of local historical and literary importance and of ethnographic and folk art objects from the Bácska and Sárköz regions. At the same time, the memorial house is not merely an exhibition space for estates and art collections. Within the walls of this old house, the visitor encounters objects reflecting the art life, the bourgeois values, and the preferred style of a little town from the early 20th century - the very impressions of the spirituality of a bourgeois life style. Sándor Éber, Sr. was born in Ráckeresztúr in 1878. From 1896 to 1900, he studied under Bertalan Székely in the Budapest Mintarajziskola, a school of applied art. He was attracted to monumental genres such as fresco painting. He came to Baja in 1902 as a professor of the teacher training college. He taught in the institute for two decades. Young and enthusiastic, he worked on a new methodology of teaching art and drawing. The results he achieved in this field were internationally acknowledged. His dedication to the reform of visual education brought him success when in 1914 the Ministry of Religion and Public Education commissioned him to elaborate the modern syllabus of art education. 19
