Mészáros Júlia, N.: 35 éves a Győri Művésztelep. Történeti áttekintés, művek, életrajzi adatok, beszámoló a jubileumi találkozóról - Győri művészettörténet 4. (Győr, 2003)
N. Mészáros Júlia: A Győri Művésztelep működésének és alkotótevékenységének 35 éve
baroque in his pictures, and Tamás Gaál realized the second masterpiece, the monumental ’Altar’ made in Győr in his new creative period. It may be descerned from the above examples that the Artists’ Symposium of Győr operated between 1991 and 1993 as an inspiring spiritual workshop of the same kind as the RÁBA Symposium used to, where as the result of the creative activity kindred in spirit a greater unit, a collective work was born, forming a direct connection with one another from the individual works preserving the subjective features of the creator. It is a rare moment in a symposium’s life that the result of some years’ undiminished creative work is synthesized and creates an ensemble of artworks that can only be made in the given place, determined by the local conditions, joined in the city’s everyday life and culture organically, crystallizing to new spiritual artistic, possessing a topical meaning. This is what happened in Győr between 1991 and 1993! Unfortunately, through the further internal intervention this productive process was also broken off, and only quite a few years later there was an opportunity to realize similarly important intellectual work and intensive creative activity at the Municipal Museum of Art. The next three years, i.e. the fifth period of the artists’ symposium between 1994 and 1998 can be evaluated partly as stagnation, partly as regression, after the artistic director István Ezsiás first made every effort to revive the bygone „golden age” and set as an objective the continuation of the programme of a group of the third generation of Hungarian geometric art - the group Mediation, which lost its topicality -, then tried to work, joining the group MADI, finally, obeying his own personal motives, invited to Győr artists creating on sharply different level. The old organizational method and creative work conforming to the bad working conditions under the pressure of necessity came into prominence again, now only with a conception that can be explained by the personality of the symposium’s leader: artistic activity in factories at summer standstill without materials and material funds; conservation of neo-avantgarde form of expression; work meeting completed with foreigners from the circle of acquaintances. To cap it all, the municipal financing of the symposium’s operation was unbelievably low. It is typical of the result that the creations of non-geometrical form of expression out of the ones of uneven artistic level, arising from the diversity of the participants’ professional skill constitute the weakest material of the 35- year jubilee exhibition. In 1999 the local government wanting the symposium’s survival but not really wishing to improve the conditions necessary for high-standard work and change the partial financing of operation gave all tasks of organization and 84
