Magyar Hírek, 1987 (40. évfolyam, 1-23. szám)
1987-09-01 / 17. szám
fite CtaffiBtoe ferne GYÖRGY BUDAY IS EIGHTY The small, round, glazed pavillion, where György Buday lives, is a small item in the park of the sanatorium of Coulsdon near London. When I visited the artist in the company of Dr Vilmos Németh, his friend and medical adviser we were able to congratulate him on his eightieth birthday. While he nibbled the nutty-creamy birthday cake - Mrs. Nemeth’s work — I looked at the Who’s Who. This is how the 45-lines entry started: “Buday, George, wood-engraver, graphic artist, bom in Kolozsvár, Transylvania, on April 7th 1907; his father was Árpád Buday, professor of Roman archeology”. The further I read the more I became convinced that each sentence in the Who’s Who was pregnant with happenings that could fill a book. "Educated at the Calvinist College in Kolozsvár” Buday began drawing and painting early in his childhood. As a secondary school pupil he roved over the Kolozsvár environment recording the beauties of the country-side in his sketchbook. When I asked him whether he preserved anything from that period he immediately showed me something: “There is that sketch drawn in red chalk. I generally drew things like that in black, blue or red chalk. Mostly landscapes. At the age of 17 I already had a one-man show at the Calvinist College of Kolozsvár.” And yet that was not the first public appearance of György Buday; when he was still a 15 — 16 years old boy, his illustrations were already published by Transylvanian weeklies. But the exhibition was still something different, it was seen even by Aladár Kuncz, the noted writer. After he viewed the pen and pencil sketches and pictures in pastel, which filled two rooms, he exclaimed: “This boy is a born wood-engraver.” “Even through I had no woodcut there” recalled Buday with a laugh “he perceived that there was a woodengraver inside me, trying to get out.” “In 1924, the year of that exhibition we moved to Szeged, and there I produced my first woodcuts in 1928.” At Szeged Buday became the founder of the Bethlen Gábor Circle and the Art College of Young People. The event that made him the moving force of those progressive student movements as well as of a group of rural sociologists was a short, six-weeks visit to England in 1928. “There were perhaps four of five of us Hungarians, who took part at the Liverpool congress of the Christian Student Movement,” - recalled Buday “but we spent a week in London before going to Liverpool and our young British friends showed us the facilities of the Settlements. The latter was a university charitable organization, which offered welfare facilities and gave financial help to working people in slum areas and promoted their cultural betterment. One of the enthusiastic members of this Movement was Major Clement Attlee, who became Prime Minister after the Second World War.” György Buday closely attended to the work of the British university students in the industrial suburbs. “When I .returned to Szeged in February 1929, I tried to translate my experiences in England to the Hungarian situation. I soon became convinced that the people, who lived on scattered homesteads around Szeged needed help most urgently.” Then young Buday coined a word, which was suitable for a slogan also at the time; he gave a talk, the title of which included this new term: “The tasks of agrarian settlements in homestead areas”! Many young people joined. They gave talks, wrote applications for illiterates, gave them medical advice and medicines. “In fact, we did everthing these people needed. But those field-days, as we used to call them then, helped us too. I, for instance, collected many folksy ornaments and Gyula Ortutay recorded folk-songs, ballads and tales.” Scholarships to Rome and to Britain When György Buday visited Britain still as a university student, it was obvious that the tried to become acquainted with the works of British graphic artists in the British Museum in the Department of Prints and Drawings. Right then in 1928 he mad<up his mind to work there as soon as he could. The opportunity opened in 1936, when a few scholarships were announced to Britain. “Of course, I applied, and so did a few theologians, engineers and agriculturalists” the artist recalls. “The chairman of the scholarship council then happened to be professor Tibor Gerevich, an art historian, but — to my misfortune — an ‘Italomaniac’ interested only in the Romance style and in Italian painting. Thus, when he called me in he told me: You applied for a scholarship, you’ve got it, you’re going to Rome!” "And did you go?" At first I did not want to go then my father, who was an archeologist and a specialist in the classical Roman age to boot, talked me into going. When the two terms ended in early summer he asked for permission to stay on until the autumn. Soon after György Buday won a scholarship to 'London, and later an extension for another year. And before that year expired the Second World Was started. “Although Hungary did not enter the war as yet, it was obvious and generally understood at home as well as out here that the country was going to finish up on the other side whether the people wanted it or not. And I was not prepared to fight on the side of Nazi Germany. That was why I stayed on in Britain.” On the staff of the BBC “The start of the whole thing was” he says “that Ralph Murray came to see me and offered to give me a radio ...” This Ralph Murray had spent some time in Hungary before the war. He had stayed in Transylvania for a year, had helped the Art Guild of Transylvania, had learnt to speak Hungarian reasonably well, and became interested in the agrarian settlement movement. The radio he offered to Buday was not a receiver, but a transmitter, the BBC. “Two of us worked in the Hungarian section. I wrote the text, László Zilahy spoke. Our programme was given the name Petőfi Rádió. It soon became very popular.” Naturally, György Buday did not give up his original vocation even during that period. When Germany conquered almost the whole of Europe and the swastika threatened Britain itself millions and millions in the British isles were encouraged by György Buday’s woodcuts. A single woodcut took the whole of the first page of the September 6th 1941 issues of the Times Literary Supplement entitled Britan looks into the future. The artist can be identified not only because of his unique style, but Buday also signed his work. This was the period, in which he created the series he still considers his most beautiful pieces. He illustrated Timon of Athens in a 37 volume Shakespeare edition. He chose this tragedy then for the good reason that in 1941 he was deprived of his Hungarian citizenship. Director of the Hungarian cultural Institute György Buday, who organized the Association of Free Hungarians in Britain during the war, offered the building of the association to democratic Hungary when the war was over. He hoped that a Hungarian Cultural Institute would be established there, much like the Collegium Hungdricum in Vienna. “Although they invited me to return to Hungary I felt so much at home in London that I thought I could help the most right there. I had good British and Western European connections, therefore I did not hesitate to accept the management of the institute.” The institute began to blossom. Then, in early 1949, as Buday remembers, it was announced at a Budapest conference that all of the institutions of that kind would be closed in Western Europe. “We tried to convince them” he continues “that the interest of the new Hungary was to ensure that these institutions should win friends, or at least objective observers, for Hungary. Right then we succeeded in delaying ’the closure of the Hungarian institutions.” Later, however, a telephone call came from Mátyás Rákosi, that he immediately wanted to talk to Buday, asking him to return home promptly. Then the Hungarian radio broadcast the closing session of the Rajk trial and the sentence. György Buday decided there and then: he would not return to Hungary, he would rather resign as director of the London Hungarian Cultural Institute. Christmas Cards After that the artist buried himself in his work. This was the period, where the twelve volumes of Little Books were published, which included Hungarian folktales, in English. The third volume described English Christmas customs. “It turned out then that even the experts of the g raphic department of the Victoria and Albert Museum themselves did not know the origin of Ciiristmas cards, or who was the first to send such cards” the artist said. György Buday began to investigate. He searched archives and ancient folios. Finally fortune smiled upon him. At a reception the Queen asked him what he was doing. Buday told her about his investigations. Queen Elizabeth II offorod him access to her great collection of Christmas cards in six large volumes. “A royal messenger brought the albums one by one, and took them back, when I finished with them. I stumbled upon countless interesting documents in them.” The result was the publication of a great volume: The History of Christmas Cards, in 1954. It was republished in 1964. Both the first and the second edition are rarities. The third tragic turn in the life of the artist came between the publication of the first and second edition of this volume. Hearing of the Hungarian events of 1956 he suffered a nervous breakdown, went to hospital, and later to the sanatorium. * Just some words in Who’s Who — and there was that much behind them. That much and still much more. The secret, for instance, of how this eighty year old artist obtains his wonderful vitality. He cut in wood the portraits of some fifty Hungarian writers and poets, he produces book covers, sends his own Christmas cards, and Calendars, to friends year after year. May a kind fate allow him to keep on sending his Christmas cards for many years to come! LÁSZLÓ GARAMI 31
