Végvári Lajos: Szalay Lajos (Miskolc, 1990)

Summary of Interviews We can't separate Szalay's oeuvre from the multiple interviews, their content is more than simple documents about his life-way. Those documents even they aren't written by the artist himself have a real literary value. His style is of high literary level on the base of great reading. Though his mainly interest turned from literature in his youth to the fine arts, his interest for literature didn't lose in importance. Even in everyday talking he was exact and very personnel in his expressions. His verbal talent was proved by the extremely rapidity in learning Spanish. The master is proud until today for the admiration of his knowledge of Spanish in Argentina. His corrections were stenographed. - The psychologue Pierre Bakonyi prepared an elaborated interview about the different stations of Szalay's life as well as his esthetic credo. It is a grateful document and no similar could be found concerning a Hungarian artist. The content of the report from the tape-recorder caused no difficulties neither for the editor nor for the lecturers: it was ready to be printed! This 150 pages of the book enriched the knowledge about Szalay's way of life and ideas. The exactitude of his memory is surprising, the details from the biographies published precedently are literally those of the interview given for the book. The content of it is a summary of the development of L. Szalay's art. It tells about prof. Benkhard who set the basement for Szalay's style. The essential is the authenticity of the knowledge of drawing, the reality, the possession of a genuine talent. This interview stressed upon Szalay's aquaintance with Picasso's art. Szalay has never rejected the ideals of his youth, he speaks of them in respect though he transcends them. But his respect get on with critics. He explains how the stars - the artists - disappeared, where and why. He made the choice of his own way, the borders of it. He never denied the fundamental character of his drawings at the Academy. During 60 years he represented his point of view: „Nature is the teacher of arts". Maybe there exists no one who the ideas of Goethe, concerning the relations between nature and art - are as exact. That opinion is the following: „The artist is master of the nature but at the same time he is its servant. Servant, at the interpretation that the artist must copy the nature with the aim to be understood, but master of it with the sense, that his experiences of the nature stimulate him to new ideas and emotions". The development of Szalay's art points to that direction. He arrived from the copying of nature to the level where he transforms the expected and learned forms to reflect his own ideas, feelings, it means the will of the artist. But this artistic willingness is double-faced. One shows an expressive temperament, those erruptions are restrained by self-control. During all his life a storm broke out around his graphics as well as for his interviews. One of his most interesting drawings is a Crucifix, where the four letters above the Christ „INRI" (lesus Nasarenus Rex ludeorum) are changed by a Hungarian play on words - meaning „lt is impossible to write the truth". The signification for the artist is that he could hardly accept constrain. It is painful because Szalay is susceptible for social problems but about all he