Ván Hajnalka (szerk.): Bepillantás a kintbe. Kolozsváry-Stupler Éva művészete - Munkácsy Mihály Múzeum Közleményei 9. (Békéscsaba, 2017)
Ván Hajnalka: Bepillatnás a kintbe
32 Hajnalka Ván Insight into outside In the history of art, Assemblage came into existence during the classic avant-garde era of the 20th century. Cubists, Dadaists, and Surrealists made use of this subversive and innovative method, but it did not become independent until the end of the 1950s. Eva Kolosvary-Stupler has been engaged in the fine arts since the second half of the last century. Her life-work is on display in this exhibition. It manifests her great empathy toward the happenings of the age, especially notable in her Assemblages created during the latter part of her productive life. In her earliest works there is a tendency toward montage-like picture formation and an inclination toward the grotesque. These can be seen in her ceramics and etchings, and are carried over into works based on the concept of search for and re-use of found objects. Although the latter works in this exhibition date from the 1980s, she continues to work in this manner now at the age of 80. Her attraction to found objects, however, goes back to her childhood. “When I was a young child, I wanted to pick up garbage but my nanny discouraged me from doing so. As a young adult, I lived in Switzerland for five years - a country where people did not throw anything in the streets and where everything was order and cleanliness. Years later, in the United States, I began to collect thrown- away, seemingly meaningless objects, and would sometimes pull things from garbage cans that caught my attention. I was also drawn to flea markets and similar places that sold cheap junk and bargained for the ones I found interesting. A nice collection began to pile up in the alleyway next to our house, and I began to assemble them into objects that were meaningful and harmonious to me.’’ Documenting her works, Eva Kolosvary-Stupler differentiates between works that can be hung up and those that can be walked around; among the latter, objects on a tripod form a separate group. Representing a cross section of her assemblage art, these thirty-seven works - the number symbolically refers to the year of her birth 1937 - prove that over the decades smaller changes are noticeable, but great transformations are not. Arranging the works in chronological order, we can notice some ’development’, arising from a greater sense of freedom. “At first, I planned my works in boxes, because I felt the need of a definite closed space; then the imaginary box opened up, and I planned completely in three dimensions, and they had no background or three sides, but one could walk around the works. The earlier works were made to be hung like etchings; later I put the assemblages on tripods." The mentality pervading the works is also the philosophy that goes beyond the question of composition. The concept of freedom can be felt mainly in her contexts. Who and what counts as free depends on our point of view. Not only in the Assemblages but in the whole life-work we encounter a recurring thought, the question of inside-outside. Expect a Miracle, made in 1983, is the earliest piece in the exhibition which classically represents the opposition of inside-out- side. In this work, the conveying material itself raises the question since the artist places the subjects into a window-frame and its casement. In the history of Assemblage, which the artist herself talks about, works arranged in box-spaces form a separate group, and compositions using a window as a ready-made object appear fre-
