K. Peák Ildikó - Shah Gabriella: Mihályfi-gyűjtemény - Dornyay Béla Múzeum, Salgótarján (Salgótarján, 2014)
The Portrait Of A Collector (About Ernő Mihályfi)
ber and as Minister of Foreign Affairs on a temporary commission between May and September. He was Deputy Minister of National Culture between January and April 1951, then Deputy Minister of Education from April 1957 until September 1958, and the list goes on. Beyond his duties as a politician he wrote studies about the culture of his time, including critiques and essays on the fine arts. The majority of his collected works on the topic were included in the volume Művészek, barátaim ("Artists, Friends of Mine") in 1977. The book was published posthumously, as Ernő Mihályfi had passed away on November 20,1972, in Budapest.1 Emlékirat helyett ("For Lack of a Memoir"), a collection of articles on culture, among them numerous essays on art, was published in 1975. The primary focus of his collecting was the works of the avant-garde artists of the first half of the 20th century. He wrote several critiques about the artists of his time, and in the volumes containing his published pieces on the fine arts one can find introductions of numerous artists dear to him whose work is featured in the collection. He writes in an especially lyrical style about Ödön Márffy's pictures displayed at the 1930 group exhibition at the Ernst Museum: "To Márffy seeing is beauty, and so it is beautiful for us to behold his pictures, through which he says This is how I see the world, the city drenched in silvery fog, the garden alive with gentle colors, the flowers, the faces of people, the figures of 1 Magyar Életrajzi Lexikon. 1981. pp. 525. women, and, above all, the atmosphere, whose veil of violet, yellow, silver, and pearl cover all, lending a common tone to the forcefully expressive, crisp, flashing colors."2 The works of Béla Uitz and Gyula Derkovits constitute a prominent part of the collection in terms of both quantity and artistic value, showing the collector's special fondness for the two artists. Recounting his first meeting with Uitz, Mihályfi writes: "I first came across Béla Uitz and his work at the Kossuth Lajos Street office of the paper MA in 1919. Our second meeting took place almost thirty years later, in February of 1948, in Moscow... Since 1948 I have visited the Hungarian artist, now living in Moscow, several times at his Zhdanov Street apartment, which reminds one of a merry boys' hangout. His room is always full of new and even newer sketches: He works in a youthful, energetic manner, with an unwavering verve and tenacity. He always speaks enthusiastically about his plans..."3 Ernő Mihályfi had a deep, earnest relationship with Gyula Derkovits, one that could even be called a friendship. Derkovits, who was born in 1894 and died at a tragically young age in 1934, came from a very different background than Mihályfi, the son of a pastor who had been born into a life of relative financial security. "One of the finest modern Hungarian painters died last night in a dingy, barely 2 Ernő Mihályfi: "Az Ernst Múzeum új csoportkiállítása." Magyarország. March 15, 1930. Rpt. in Ernő Mihályfi: Művészek, barátaim, pp. 58. Mihályfi-gyüjtemény 17
