Vámosi Katalin: Mazsaroff Miklós 1929-1997 : A természet igézetében (Miskolc, 2010)

Summary

busy fulfilling the family duties, so painting as such was a bit neglected at that time. His first marriage seemed to be a failure and soon ended in divorce. He travelled to Bulgaria in the autumn of 1956, on the one hand because of academic purposes, but in order to search for his father's relatives on the other. His father left the village Draganovo for Hungary in 1910 together with other gardeners, and settled here. Miklós Mazsaroff returned to Hungary in April the following year, for the borders were closed in November because of the revolutionary events. On the occasion of visiting the relatives he got acquainted with his later second wife, to whom he returned in November 1957 and married in December the same year. When finally returning to Miskolc he created an existence, his circumstances got stabilized, and consequently his art showed the positive results of the changes. He took part in several exhibitions from the year 1959, and his first independent solo-show was organized in 1961 in the Szőnyi István Showroom, in Miskolc. Influenced by the Mediterranean, Italian scenery his art showed the development of his style in the second half of the 60s, when the solid, low-keyed lyrical postimpressionistic colours and traditional, usual images were replaced by a more constructive, characteristic expression, a dynamic world of shaping, a fierce world of colours and the expression of intrinsic system and sever construction. The abrupt explosion of Miklós Mazsaroff's temperament created a dynamic, sharp, characteristic feature not only in his paintings but as well as his graphical pieces. It was mainly the etching, the linoand wood-cuts that he liked to create in the company of the graphical artists Gyula Feledy, András Cs.Nagy, Kálmán Csohány and others. He took part in several artists' colonies, such as Prilep, Michalovce, Sirava, Strazsica and Vologda. From the 70's till his death Mazsaroff played an important role in the artistic life having several significant functions, and taking part in exhibitions both in Hungary and abroad. First he was appointed to be the secretary of the Group of Borsod County Fine Artists, then the artistic secretary of the Regional Organization of the Federation of Hungarian Arts and Crafts, and - for eight years - the leader of the Miskolc Railway Fine Art Group. He had close connections with the local Bulgarians, both individuals and their institutions. He was awarded several professional prizes, e.g. in 1970, 1976 and 1978 at the Winter Show, but the greatest, the Munkácsy prize was adjudged to him in the year 1981. He had contracts with agricultural cooperatives (Borsodszirák, Edelény, Múcsony) and industrial firms (Borsodnádasd, LKM Metallurgical Works), where he organized exhibitions of his new pieces of art on a yearly basis in order to let the companies choose the ones to possess as an exchange against the artist's monthly stipend. The four decades of artistic creativity of Miklós Mazsaroff can be characterized as an intensive value-creating period. His rich oeuvre contains significant graphical works of art and drawings besides the important dominant paintings. Specialists consider him to be primarily a landscape-painter, but his artistic oeuvre includes considerable still-lives and portraits as well. His dynamic, decorative landscapes well represent the changes that have been taken in Miskolc and its surroundings, the development of the agriculture and industry of the regions, and - last but not least - the experiences of his study-tours abroad. His visit to Italy resulted such a sharp change in his oeuvre that the art of the 70's remained a long-lasting dominant style in his artistic development, the upgrading process was only broken because of the cruel illness in the end. Miklós Mazsaroff - together with Gyula Feledy, Béla Kondor, József Vati, Imre Tóth, Zoltán Lenkey, László Kalló, János Seres, Pál Barczi and others - is regarded to be a ferment and formative personality of the fine art life of Miskolc and Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén County. 39