Horváth János: Balázs János festőművész emlékkiállítása (1904-1927), 2005

monumental effects as for example the „Escape from Egypt" and the „Wonderful Fishing". First he used pencil then aquarelle and then completed them with oil. The landscape of Lake Balaton served as background for the fishers and the men in escape on the ass's back. He fine-tuned this landscape-background gloomy or sunny according to the themes by using his own impressions. All those who chose painting plan-air were exposed to the anger of nature. His summer and winter atelier was the sometimes beautiful and occasionally tempestuous natural world. As workroom he could use only their kitchen with his sweet mother doing her work around him. That was the place where he painted portrays of his parents, grandparents sisters and brothers and still-life themes got shape on then kitchen table. His art got wholly embodied in his family life. His best paintings are beautiful confessions of their living. If the weather agreed with him he was able to do his artwork in that little cabin carpentered in the court of the house. „To draw, to paint that was what I always wanted to do, I was ready for any sacrifice to do that. My parents, and mainly my father, were not really happy about it, but my mom was more understanding, when I ran out of money she always gave me some. I neglected learning to some extent in the fourth class of secondary school but I still had good marks because all my teachers liked me. They knew that I was painting and one of them called me „little pictor". I have graduated in 1920 and started to focus on painting very much. They were often mad at me because I did not mean to be a clerk, but I did not really long for that." - as youngman János wrote it down in his notebook. Rippl-Rónai taught him the concise and decorative postimpressionist visuality, Aurél Bernáth guided him into the Cézanneian pre-cubist way of configuration. By the age of twenty when he started his studies at the College of Fine-Arts in Budapest, he barely had anything else to be taught. He accomplished the tasks with delight. He hired a shabby room and suffered of improper nutrition. The youngman started to cough. His body could not tolerate the cool room, the smoky, humid and foggy air of the City of Budapest and after two or three months of stay he had to surrender. He returned to Kaposvár, laid in bed for a while then got partially recovered and started painting immediately. He created masterpieces. A marvellous self portrait and heartbreaking pictures of the poor home. Still-lives with the belongings of poor people: a plate of white-porcelain, a mug, a spoon, an oil-lamp and the small bottle of medicament as the sign of illness, all in a mute and puritan dignity. As if the spirit of Chardin's still-lives touched us. He began to sell his paintings to get some income. He constructed an atelier out of the former little cabin but the wet walls could not get dried during winter time and he became sick again. Tuberculoses, the incurable disease of that time attacked his body. He entered the local hospital in the spring of 1926 and stayed there until he died on the 23

rd of March 1927. The professor of the Pulmonology Department, Dr. Jenő Csurgó helped carefully János not only in a medical way but supported him with the necessary tools of painting. Dedicated to the memory of his master Aurél Bernáth's visit in the hospital János painted a bouquet of Asters in a sheer glass on a hospital chair. His family preserved all of his paintings since his childhood. A smaller chest of three drawers was big enough to store them. There are about five hundred pieces of works, frameless painting on cards, sketches on piece of papers all waiting for to get discovered by the spectators. His descendants protect them with devotedness and love. It is assumed that another one hundred pieces of works were sold or gifted to unknown people or unfortunately lost. We do hope that the centenary exhibition will improve the understanding and the deserved acknowledgment of his artwork. János Horváth 58