Horváth János: Kunffy Lajos, 1993

artists who painted in the region called the Great Plain. The themes were selected from the intime moments of peasant life: Birth, Bread Cutting and The Death of the Mother. That same year he travelled to Spain with his family. Of his considerable artistic output in Spain, his most outstanding work is The Doorman of the Generalife Hotel (1926). In 1927 he had another exhibition at the Fine Arts Salon in Budapest. In 1930 he and Ivanyi-Grunwald accompanied a collection of Hungarian paintings to Belgrade and later, alone, he travelled to Bucharest with the collection. With his diplomatic abilities he garnered appreciation from the Serbian grand duke and the Romanian prime minister. This was an era of political tension caused by the recent rearrangement of national borders, and Kunffy's missions resulted in such surcess that a Hungarian Department was established at the University of Bucharest. In 1934 Kunffy gave up his home in Budapest and moved permanently to Somogytur. At this time he started to experiment with his painting technique. By painting with transparently thin oils on canvasses prepared with white base, he created a fresh, delicate impression similar to that of an aquarelle. He also took part in civic activities in Kaposvár and organized an exhibition of paintings by Ivanyi-Grunwald and himself in 1932 and again in 1934. He was the first to select paintings for the Museum of Kaposvar's collection of modern art. He maintained a home at Kaposvár until the time of his father's death in 1934. During a two-year-period (1937 to 1938) he painted at the Dalmatian Coast of the Adriatic and then, after that, was in ill health for years. In 1942 he surfaced with paintings executed in a new technique, exhibiting at the Tamas Gallery in Budapest. The appreciative reviews in the press talked about a rejuvenation of Kunffy. He survived the most dramatic years of the Second World War in Budapest, while his house in Somogytur was vandalized and robbed. Nearly one thousand of his paintings disappeared or were damaged. Hiding in underground shelters, he survived the Siege of Budapest. He left a diary recording these oppresive days. His large land holdings were confiscated after the war by the Communists. His beautiful, prosperous estate, with its fish hatcheries and vineyards, languished. He was permitted to keep and occupy his house, the nearby atelier and the park in which they were both located. He took it upon himself to start anew, and from that point on made his living only by painting. His pictures of peasants were welcomed by the Marxist government because in them they saw support for their ideology of the rise of peasant-workers. Thus, Kunffy was transformed into a repository of so-called „progressive traditions" during the 1950s. In 1949 and in 1952 he had solo exhibits at Kaposvár and in 1953, together with Oszkár Glatz, he exhibited at the Ernst Museum. The old master was shown ever-increasing respect. For example, in 1955 the exhibition shared with Glatz was even taken to Beijing. In 1956 he had his own exhibition in the Rippl-Ronai Museum in Kaposvár. In 1958 his atelier was open to the public as a picture gallery named for him, He received the Decoration of Labor (1959) and was named Distinguished Artist with honors in 1960. The last great exhibition of his paintings during his lifetime took place at the Ernst Museum in I960. He died in the hospital at Kaposvár on March 12, 1962, at the age of 93,