Novotny Tihamér szerk.: 10 + 1 éves a Szentendrei Grafikai Műhely (Pest Megyei Múzeumok Igazgatósága, Szentendre, 1991)
/ K.: It had indeed, but it startea functioning as a graphic artists' colony in 1978. There was a modest printing workshop in town where there was an offset press and a xerox machine, and this gave us an impulse to form the workshop. First we drew right on the offset plate and later copied photos on the plates Py the xerox machine ana produced prints of small series. It was then that we decided to develop the printing workshop. We received the photosensitive plates later ana they were much better to work with. T. N.: Did you produce silkscreens as well? / K.: Yes, but we startea applying this technology only about 1983-1984... T. N.: The Graphic Workshop of Szentendre, however, started to function in 1980 and as far as I know you played an active part in it, too... / K.: I did, indeed, and I certainly utilized and shared my personal experiences as they we r e needed. So silkscreens were proPuced earlier in Szentendre than in Makó. As to me, I produced my first silkscreens in 1972. That year I went to Belgium where I could try myself how to make a silkscreen at a workshop. It was very close to my views then and I was very eager to discover what was vested in the technique. So I came home with a suitcase of real paint and thinners, etc. but I had to start out here as a partisan who knew the basics but not the details of the technique. I brought a leaflet in Flemish half of which was missing, so first of all I had to find a translator before I could start working. Needless to say, I quickly ran out of paint, screens and photosensitive emulsion. I tried to produce them at home but I had to struggle hard for the result. I set up my workshop at home and, as you may guess, I drove my family sort of mad... I used hypo for removing layers, for instance, for the emulsion burnt into the canvas so much that I could not even blow it off despite the days of soaking. I came to know only later that manufacturers took a special care to make their products irreplaceable by products of other chemical plants. We use only complete sets at the College of Fine Arts for the products of different firms repel one another. T. N.: Which is your first piece produced by this technology? /. K.: My first silkscreen whose reproduction was included in the second volume of The School of Fine Arts (edited by Pál Molnár C, Képzőművészeti Alap, 1976 Budapest) was „Music Box" (a twin piece of which was made with the title „Camera"), By the way, I was rather pleasea when the former was awaraed a prize in Cracow in 1973, At the time I worked as a teacher in the mural workshop of the College and I remember the mindless and inexplicable fear that prevailed among the leaders concerning the technipue. The students were all the more enthusiastic to get acquainted with it so I took my tools with me, If I remember well it was one of Gábor Záborszky's pieces which was printed on a glass pane. It was the way we smuggled in silkscreen to the College, But in the mid-seventies there was such a high interest in the silkscreen that they had to do something, anyway. Finally Károly Raszler, the head of department was well-meaning enough to support the improvement of the workshop and appointed me as the organizer of the silkscreen workshop for he knew I had some practice in this technipue and I had written about it. T. N.: So they started dealing with silkscreens in 1977-78...
