A Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve: Studia Historica 2. (Szeged, 1999)

MURÁDIN Jenő: Vágó Gábor (1894-1968)

JENŐ MURÁDIN GÁBOR VÁGÓ 1894-1968 The career of sculptor Gábor Vágó emerged from the artistic traditions and context of two towns: Szeged and Kolozsvár (Cluj, Romania). With his modest tools, he enriched the Hungarian culture which was not confined to state boundaries. The sculptor dedicated himself to the production of ecclesiastical art. However, there were plenty of works of art, especially portraits leaving his studio, which were based on secular themes. Only a few such examples of could be seen in his exhibitions. Due to his religious belief, he was pushed behind and had fallen into the shadows of disfavour by authority in the latter part of his life. His rapidly expanding religious contacts helped him go on a study visit to Italy. He definitely needed this in order to go past his auto-deductive and self-taught position. Returning from Italy, the sculptor and his wife moved to Jászberény. They worked in this town mostly for the years 1927-1930, as well as temporarily in Pest, and finally in Szeged. The Vágó couple returned to Transylvania during the period of large scale economic hardships. After furnishing his studio, Vágó received significant orders from his ecclesiastical supporters during the years 1932-1933. In 1932, he received an order for the making of a bust of Count Gustáv Majláth. Soon after, Vágó accepted a request for the statue of István Báthory from Bishop Majláth and the Board of the Religious District of Transylvania. From the 1930s, he made more chalices, sacrament holders and wrought candle holders. His goldsmith and metalworking pieces of art became well known and thus, orders were not only originating from his religious denomination, but often from the Protestant church as well. The most attractive offer he received in Szeged was the making of the sculpture of Albert Szent-Györgyi, the Nobel Prize winning bio-chemist and doctor. At the beginning of 1939, Vágó and his wife moved to Szeged permanently. Later on, his success became extensively limited by his expression of his deeply felt religious emotions which were reflected in his social and artistic behaviour. Though he enjoyed his participation in the artistic life of Szeged (both he and his wife exhibited their works in the museum of Szeged in 1943), much more than in Kolozsvár, he was swept aside during the years of dogmatism [in the first half of the 1950s]. He had to leave his studio and lived in increasing isolation and more modestly in his home in Szeged. Gábor Vágó was a productive master of our sculpting art. His life's work was incidentally unrivaled in the context of ecclesiastical art.