Klemmné Németh Zsuzsa (szerk.): Triznya Mátyás 1922 - 1991 (Szentendre-Zebegény, 2012)

ing for us with some delicious pizza, which grew cold because we - being inexperienced travellers, who had been permitted to leave the country every three years only — lost our way in Rome. In spite of this, after a few minutes, we felt at home with them as if we had been everyday guests “at that Hungarian island in Rome”as we can read the concise definition of their particular literary salon at the beginning of the book titled A Triznya-kocsma7. We were having coffee when Zsuzsa whispered to me that Matyi would love to have an exhibition at the Szőnyi Museum in Zebegény.

Naturally, as a young and naive museologist, I agreed, why not, Mátyás Triznya was also one of István Szőnyi s pupils. And, what a wonder, by the following spring, the exhibition was realized, perhaps, due to the milder atmosphere before the forthcoming change of the political system. The opening ceremony became a pilgrimage: several hundreds of people were thronging in the small rooms of the Szőnyi-house, everybody would have liked to see Matyi’s pictures - which could not be realized in such circumstances - and, most of all, to greet the Triznya couple and thank them for their kindness and hospitality in Rome.

Unfortunately, in the following years, Matyi got ill though he kept his good humour and painted till the end. On 18th October 1991, the day of the patron saint of painters, he died in Rome. He was buried in the graveyard of Zebegény.

After the exhibition in Zebegény, there were several bigger or smaller shows in Hungary: in 2002, on the occasion of the Year of Hungarian Culture in Italy, at Hegyvidék Gallery in Városmajor and also in the Benedictine Monastery ofTihany. The Szentendre exhibition in 2005 offered a full picture of the painterly world

7 Zsuzsa Szőnyi: A Triznya-kocsma, Kortárs Kiadó, Budapest, 1999

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