Kiss Joakim Margit szerk.: Szentendrei művészet 1926–1935 között (Szentendrei Múzeumi Füzetek 2. Szentendre, 1997)

Tóth Antal: A Szentendrei Festők Társasága, a városba látogagó művészvendégek, valamint a szabadiskola résztvevői és a szentendreiek kapcsolata más művészeti társaságokkal 1926–1935 között

ber of the participants was estimated at fifty per summers. Compared with this great participation rate there are only a few persons we can identify. It was in March 1930 that the Szentendre Painters' Society debuted in the National Salon; the founder members, guests and invited artists as well as some of the students of the free school. Even the predecessors like Károly Ferenczy and Adolf Fényes and their patron Béla Iványi Grünwald were involved in this exhibition. Beyond the maintenance of the free school this show was the most important mutual event of the artists of Szentendre during the period till 1935. At the beginning of the 1930s the series of local exhibitions was stopped, the reason for which is unknown. We only have data about later exhibitions in December 1934 and 1935. In 1934 the members decided to make the life of the colony more private, "strangers can be accomodated in extraordinary cases only", and even the right of private entertaining was limited. The period between 1926 and 1935 was a succesful and effective part of the life of the old colony of Szentendre artists. Besides the necessary primary conditions of existence and work like forming and establishing organizationally an advantageous relationship was brought about with the town and its citizens capable of patronizing arts. During the first four or five years a higher level culture-political concept seemed to be realized: namely, that coutry town citizens, as a social-economic basis, could afford to maintain arts. This was the historical role, the purpose of work and sacrifices the artists and their local patrons undertook and proclaimed on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition in 1928: "The significance of the exhibition is that Szentendre is to take over the role of the old border fortresses at a time when the incomplete country only has the means of culture to fight with. The town will be the strong border fortress, the great bastion of culture in the neighbourhood of the Trianon border, and through spreading arts it will fulfil a cultural mission. And this is the right concept of neonationalism ..." Szentendre was not among the settlements determined to be developed and supported, and the town as well as its artists' colony had to rely on its own resources. 22