Kostyál László: „Hirdette utcákon tereken” Németh János művei köztereken és középületekben (Zalaegerszeg, 2004)
„Professed in the streets and squares ...”
eternal cycle of winter and summer, night and day, youth and old age. Within this circular form there is also a male and female figure. This motif recurs many times and is highly complex in its content and nature, formulated with the wise laconism of folk art. Transversally, opposite this motif there is a flower starting to grow from its seed and two pigeons winnowing freely, both of which intensify the love of life. In the top left corner there is a disciplined Roman with two horses, standing in a rigid posture with a stern profile, and opposite him archaeological motifs shed light on the scene: a chapiter and an idol-like torso. An exciting question is raised by this depiction in terms of plasticity: should an illusion of space be used to form the two horses standing next to each other and the human figure standing behind them? Németh answered this question with matter-of-fact simplicity by depicting the parts that are visible from the side in one plane and ignoring the laws of perspective, reaching back to a much more primitive but nonetheless effective depiction schema. The figure of the Shepherd made in 1981 for the Hungarian Embassy in New-Delhi is of outstanding significance. One might suggest that the block-like depiction enclosed in symmetry reached its peak in Németh' s art with this piece. The two legs, the body and the head of the moustached shepherd figure leaning on his crook and wearing a sheepskin coat and a kalpak are truncated cones. The synergy of the cones is only broken by the huge arms clinging to the body and the heavy crook, as well as the nose dividing the face and the long moustache. The artist had reached a point here from which any further step towards abstraction may have rendered the piece unrecognisable, so he returned to a plastically more relaxed depiction. The figure itself is an emblem, for when looking at it we definitely do not think of a shepherd grazing his herd in the mountains. It is evident that this figure represents the fierce shepherd of the vast Hungarian Plains, who rules the landscape and the whole herd with a mere wink, and who is perhaps the most effective symbol to express our millennial national character. Two years later another important stage began, and the frieze of the Keresztury House in Zalaegerszeg was sculpted. Both the ceramist and poet, Dezső Keresztury, dinged to their native land with equal love and awe, and the relief, an incredibly dense depiction of this feeling, became the first in a series built around a similar theme. (Kölcsey Ferenc Grammar School, Zalaegerszeg; the Hungarian Embassy, Canberra; Forest Hungary office building, Zalaegerszeg, etc.). The ideal of the Zala homeland is exhibited in this first piece of the series: the thatched wine cellar built on top of a gentle, rolling hill between vines; the typical road-side cross of Göcsej; the Calvinist belfry; the stream that might be hiding Attila 7 s treasures in its water; the cows grazing on its banks; the bunny couching between field flowers; the scythe-man sitting under the giant tree of life with wise imperturbability, meditating upon the hidden meaning of life. His thoughts presumably carry those of the artist, since he feels he belongs to this habitat as well, to the world of villages preserving earth-smelling, flower-scented, century-old traditions. The joint apparition of the tree and the scythe-man also refers to life and death, and to genesis and fate at a deeper level of meaning, entwining the everyday life of simple peasants with this eternal cycle. The various elements of the frieze are placed next to one another with obvious naturalness. We almost feel part of the landscape; we can touch its details, drink the invigoratingly fresh air, and admire the warble of birds. However, no anatomical fidelity, no rule of perspectives, nor any other academic scroll bound the artist's hands. The technique derives from the immediacy and naturalness of folk artists raised in a different school, artists who could depict everything in a most effective way. 15
