Veszprémi Nóra - Jávor Anna - Advisory - Szücs György szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 2005-2007. 25/10 (MNG Budapest 2008)

LÓRÁND BERECZKY: The First Fifty Years - 50™ ANNIVERSARY OF THE HUNGARIAN NATIONAL GALLERY - Krisztina PASSUTH: Back Home Again: The Paris-Budapest Odyssey of the Tihanyi Estate

1. André Kertész: Portrait of Lajos Tihanyi. HNG Archive, inv. no.: 18872/1973/18 "all was not lost because the relatively weightless, unframed canvases and the drawings can be packed into two larger boxes, and brought home by train."

14 She did not make it clear what she meant by "official difficulties". In my opinion, transport by rail, especially in view of the quantity and condition of the paintings, would hardly have been practicable. Furthermore, as always, the French authorities permitted the transport of such a large body of paintings and drawings home under very strict conditions - as I was to experience later. By the summer of 1970, when I went to Paris, the Hungarian side had not fulfilled all of these conditions. As far as I am concerned, I got involved in the matter without knowing it. As an assistant museologist of the Museum of Fine Arts at the time, I was charged with curating an exhibition called 20'

h-Centuiy Hungarian Artists Abroad.

15 (The story of this show is even more adventurous than the homecoming of the Tihanyi estate, but I shall only dwell on it in so far as it relates to the latter.) The material of the exhibition, most of which was in France, was collected by a Paris firm contracted to do so. (If my memory does not fail me, it was in fact jointly performed by the larger Chenue and the smaller Mory companies.) The transportation of this material home had to be arranged in Paris, and, being the curator, I was assigned this task by the ministry. However, as I have now come to learn from an unsigned ministry memo, my one-week mission was to be funded from the provision originally allocated for the National Gallery colleague who was to arrange the transport of the Tihanyi estate.

16 (Apart from me, the financial manager of the Museum of Fine Arts Ferenc Fábián also travelled, but I know not how his trip was budgeted.) Nor do I remember whether there was a ministerial order - nor has any turned up since - officially assigning me, apart from collecting the material for the exhibition of Hungarian artists living abroad, the task of bringing home the Tihanyi estate (for precision's sake, to fulfil the administrative duties this would entail in France). Nevertheless, everyone, including myself, regarded this as my responsibility. However, it was only in Paris that I realized that I knew nothing of the antecedents, no one having advised me on them. But I was adamant, determined to bring home Tihanyi 's works even at the price of circumventing law. At the time, I was convinced that if something were not to return home to Hungary, it would be forever lost for us. And, certainly, the greater part of the Tihanyi oeuvre could only be regarded as a virtual part of Hungarian art history, for no one had seen it or known it. In fact, what I wanted was to "save" the Tihanyi estate - something rather naïve of me looking back after decades have past. My motive, however, was fair and simple: I had an extraordinarily high opinion of Tihanyi's art, and had done quite a lot of work on him for my book on The Eights and for the Székesfehérvár show of the work of The Eights and the Activists back in 1965.

17 1 was utterly enthused by the prospect of being able to use the huge trailer set to transport the material of Hungarian artists in France for bringing home the Tihanyi estate, too, and would have done anything possible to achieve that end. Of course, I had not the faintest idea what difficulties I would have to face. Ministry officials timed my trip for the worst possible moment July 14, which, being a national holiday, meant that all offices were shut. I thus lost one full day from my allotted seven. It immediately turned out that the transport of the 20

th-century Hungarian material in France was more or less settled, but that of the Tihanyi estate was, to say the least, a far cry from it. I had been informed on all this by a kindly young woman official of the transport company, who invited me for an obviously compulsory business lunch. When she brought this home to me, I literally began to plead with her to arrange the transport in spite of everything. One of the conditions of this would have been to make photos of each artwork for the French customs authorities, from whom the permission for the transport was supposed to have been obtained. (Naturally, this should have been done long before I arrived in Paris.) As far as I remember, the French woman managed to get the French Customs Office to dispense with this requirement, as there was no time or money to have the photos made. The other condition was that the pictures the Musée d'Art Moderne had chosen months before should be handed over to it, the other authority that was to permit the transport. As the Hungarian Institute had failed to do so, I undertook to take the pictures to the Museum myself. Not being familiar with Parisian ways, I had myself driven in the Institute car to the museum at lunchtime without prior notice, and taking the pictures under my arm walked into the building - with the eyes of some of the visitors fastened on me. Fortunately, I managed to get hold of a museologist, who would take over the paintings,

18 and, in a couple of days, authorize the transport. This was not the end of the quandary. As I went back to the Hungarian Institute in Paris, I was shown a large, greenish chest,

19 which, as the Institute officials told me, contained nothing important, only the personal belongings of Tihanyi, and there was