K. Peák Ildikó - Shah Gabriella: Mihályfi-gyűjtemény - Dornyay Béla Múzeum, Salgótarján (Salgótarján, 2014)
The Portrait Of A Collector (About Ernő Mihályfi)
It would be a mistake to ignore the fact that the collection also includes-as contemporaries of Ernő Mihályfi in his final years-the work of less "party-line" artists from the middle of the 20th century, among them the drawings of Béla Kondor, the great contrarian of his time, as well as those of another "rebel", Lajos Szalay, who even left the country for a while. Most likely due to Mihályfi's involvement in public affairs, products of "social realism" also made it into the collection, albeit only to a minor extent. However, his good taste and love of the arts kept him from making bigger "slips", thus the greater part of the collection has stood the test of time in terms of theme and content. It is important to note that beyond the theme of class warfare the work of Gyula Derkovits is characterized by intimate family scenes, idyllic moments and religious compositions, similarly to the Béla Uitz pictures in the collection, featuring poetic female portraits and nudes. Bertalan Pór, one of the leading artistic figures of the Hungarian Republic of Councils, also appears as the painter of landscapes and somewhat idyllic pastoral scenes. The collection's lithographical album Dancing by Marcell Vértes, who designed several posters for the Republic of Councils and later immigrated to France, portrays the sultry world of clubs with dry irony, which has more in common with the work of Toulouse-Lautrec than the puritanical ideology of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Of course, this overview can only hint at the diversity of the collection, since the nearly eight hundred pictures in the Dornyay Béla Museum's possession constitute merely a fraction of the complete legacy. It is strange that hardly anything is known about the collection's genesis. We do not know the impetus that drove Ernő Mihályfi to collect paintings, drawings and statues. It was most likely after World War II that he started getting serious about art collecting. In keeping with family tradition, he had already owned pictures before the war. Some drawings, including two by Egry, feature traces of strange holes, which were repaired long ago. When laid on top of each other, the holes in the pictures line up, giving the impression that the stacked drawings were all pierced by a bullet. Knowing that the villa on Bogár Street was hit multiple times during the war, we can surmise that these works survived the siege of Budapest. However, the photographs that remain from the prewar period show „only" ceramic plates on the walls (Mihályfi also collected rare books and masterpieces of folk art). In some cases the inscription might also prove helpful. The following message is found at the bottom of Csaba Vilmos Perlrott's monumental lithographed portrait of Christ: „To my friend Mihályfi with love, Berlin 922" This drawing was most likely among the first pieces of the collection. What is certain is that art historian Katalin Sinkó was of great assistance to Mihályfi in improving the collection. As an expert on the pictures in Mihályfi's possession, she was the first to compile and edit the first comprehensive catalog of the collection at the beginning of the 1980s. Commissioned by the Ministry of Culture in 1976, as the chief appraiser of the Bizományi Áruház Miháiyfi-gyüjtemény 19
