Végvári Lajos: Szalay Lajos (Miskolc, 1990)
Summary During 6 decades Lajos SZALAY surrounded the world of arts with his drawings. His oeuvre has the capability to show us the heritage of the XX th century. The century the most cruel of human history which had to suffer the most hopeless crises of inhumanity, lut on the other side the most heroic of our history. Szalay declares according to his experiences, with the great Hungarian poet Vörösmarty „that mankind is painful for the Earth, mud of sheer madness". Szalay's art is a reflection of the deformed humanity, a cry of dispair coming from misery and passion. Though he didn't want this cast, his dream of childhood had been that of a pastoral idyll. But his destiny led him to the misery of suburb proletariate. Later he became a participant of the second World War's tragedies, one part of the time in the army. The awful inhumanities, following, the Hungarian politicial situation after 1945 frightened him. He preferred to leave his country first for Paris - then for Argentina. The political changes in that country, as well as the opinion of the artists according the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 let him move to New York, where the American citizenship was accorded to him. But he never felt really home there because of his too straight caracter, his frank talking and the incapability to be his own „manager". He couldn't achieve a real success neither in moral nor in financial sense. He has been appreciated by Picasso at several occasions but the enviousness of the art-dealers demented the declarations of the great Spaniard. That is one of the reasons of L. Szalay's distressing nostalgia complex for Picasso. He says: „Picasso has materialized the eternal Hungarian desire for observing the world with classic quietness only we hadn't the ability to do it". Picasso did it with his Latin temper and dispositions; he could go across the rope spanned over the most horrible crimes of the world (the fachisme V. L.). We climbed over this rope, but could do it only by wounding our hands until achieving the end. I am envious of this joy of creation, his Latin lightness, his mediterrian erotism. I wasn't able to follow him, his Greek purity". Szalay is not a person of harmony; his world-concept - remembering the Hell of Dante - is not only a picture of the Hungarian tragedies, but it could be explained with the incapability to surmount the atrocities of the age. He suffers with the sufferers and hopes to save the real values with help of honest people. He fights against the evil of the time therefore he shows in his art all the atrocities. Sometimes he wants to create a human ideal, but the real value of his art is closed in his solitude. Szalay is firmly struggling
