Tasnádi Attila: Mazsaroff Miklós (Borsodi Kismonográfiák 33. Miskolc, 1989)

Miklós Mazsaroff was born on the 24th of December, 1929 in the village Alsózsolca, near Miskolc. His father was of Bulgarian origin, but he settled down in Hungary, and worked as a gardener at the Vay estate. In the larg family the children learnt the love and treatment of land early. The child who excelled in drawing first became a gardener then a miner. But owing to the democratic equality of chances the talent scouts of the people's colleges recognized his abilities. In 1947 he became the member of the people's collage under the direction of Gyula pap, who was the one-time student than teacher of the Bauhaus. This school-type was a students' welfare organization and a community performing special educational tasks at the same time. These boarding schools which were set up for art students were characterized by homely atmosphere, both democratic and high-level education. In a peculiar way they did not give only vocational training, but also erudition to the students. His teachers were among the eminent masters belonging to the earlier ignored left-wing of Hungarian art. They did not only deliver lectures, but also they tried tos make their sudents get acquainted with the ethical an professional requirements of art profession during the long talks with them. The sudents worked mainly in nature modelling plants and flowers. Gyula Pap required careful and precise work, determined the tasks and insisted on fulfilling them. This creative and educative atmosphere determined the forming of the students. It had a specially great influence on the formation of the attitude of the most sensitive ones among them on Mazsaroff. he entered the Hungarian School of Arts in 1948. He was the pupil of Bertalan Pór, Róbert Berény later Endre Domanovszky there. Durring the complicated social agitation Mazsaroff's art was influenced by the lack of policy in Berény's intimate lyrism going back to the traditions of the post-Nagybánya-school. On the other hand his pictorial composition bears the marks of the structural view of Gyula Pap. As a younk artist the problems of making a living, the tense social atmosphere, the longing for the visit of his paternal homeland diverted his attention from painting for a time. After a while he returned to Hungary with his Bulgarian wife and began to paint again. He settled down in Miskolc in 1958 and since then he has been living and working here. The cange going on in Hungarian art at the turn of the 1950s influenced him as well. Quantitative growth the experience of the Mediterranean scenery owing to this change. The contrasts and the tension make his temperament free, his works get a special character in their content as well. In the 1970s his art achieved its present state, he got his most valuable prize concerning his profession (Munkácsy-prize) in 1981. In our decade when the exhibition showing his ceuvre is organized he is concerned with the representation of original flower-pieces glowing in passion and of sceneries seeming to be exotic in the Carpathian basin. 75