Magyar News, 2004. szeptember-2005. augusztus (15. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2004-12-01 / 4. szám
Though it is a two hour ride for me to get to the Museum of the American Hungarian Foundation in New Brunswick, but what I find at the end of the journey is always pleasant. Among all the activities I never miss seeing their exhibits. This time the very nice and helpful Patricia Fazekas, curator, amazed me with the rich, colorful and powerful, exhibition of Ilonka Kárász. The collection came from the University of Georgia’s Museum of Art. This is what we learned about Ilonka Kárász: “Ilonka Kárász was bom July 13, 1896, in Budapest. She had two younger siblings. Mariska and Steve. Her father, a silversmith, died while the children were young,. The mother soon moved to the United States. The children remained in Hungary with relatives to complete their educations. There, Ilonka attended the Royal School of Arts and Crafts in Budapest, where she was one of the first women admitted. Arriving to the United States in 1913, Kárász soon settled in Greenwich Village, a haven for writers, artists, actors and other intellectuals. Greenwich Village liberated Kárász from the "Old World prejudice" she encountered in Hungary that women could not compete with men in art. She quickly established herself as an artist of unique ability, diversity, and energy. Kárász's earliest documented activity in Greenwich Village is her work with the Society of Modem Art, an avant-garde organization founded in late 1914 by a group of European-born American artists. The level to which Kárász maintained contacts in Hungary is unclear, though she traveled back at least once before World War II. In America she submitted images to the Hungarian-language magazine, Magyar Nő, which was published in New Portrait of Ilonka Kárász A few samples of The New Yorker magazine covers York, and she helped establish a Hungarian theater in New York. During the mid- to late 1910s Kárász created numerous designs for printed textiles and participated in a series of textile design contests sponsored by the daily trade publication Women's Wear. She won prizes in the first three contests. The contests were part of a campaign to foster historical designs of the Americas and the European folk arts as fertile sources of inspiration for modem design. During Kárász's youth one of the primary artistic influences in Budapest was A view ofpart of the exhibition i NCH ANT1MÍ MOP&& UONKAKARAH Page 6 ENCHANTING MODERN: ILONKA KARASZ 1 8 9 6 - 1 9 8 1
