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

2. André Kertész: Portrait of Lajos Tihanyi- HNG Archive, inv. no.: 18872/1973/24 no use of taking any trouble with it. Moreover, as they had as a matter of fact forgotten to see to it, the chest and its contents did not appear in the National Bank transportation list or any other list issued by either the French or the Hungarian authorities, and thus it could not be taken home anyway. I would not be convinced, so I dug into the disorderly jumble of the box, and, to my great fortune, the first thing I pulled out was an Henri Nouveau collage and then another one.

20 (I failed to take real notice of the André Kertész photos in the chest.). Without thinking, I immediately declared that the box would be coming home with me. Unexpectedly, Ferenc Fábián came to my assistance, saying that I should leave the matter to him. By that time, the trailer had been loaded with the "cargo" (the works of 20

th-century Hungarians and Tihanyi), and the French Customs Office had already sealed it with the so-called "TIR" stamp, meaning that the trailer could not be opened until it reached its destination. Except, of course, for the driver's cab. It was under the driver's seat that Tihany 's chest was put. (The driver agreed to do so because he had not been able to buy the knitting machine he had been asked to bring to Hungary absolutely unofficially by someone, and the hiding place was thus vacant.) Ferenc Fábián went with the driver in the lorry, I took the train back home. This explains why the chest does not appear in any official document, and there is no record of how its contents found their way into the Archive of the Gallery. The lorry arrived safely in Budapest, and its fifteen packages were placed in the Marble Hall of the Museum of Fine Arts until customs clearance, and were finally transferred to the Hungarian National Gallery on August 10, 1970.

21 Upon the instructions of the director of the former, Dr. Klára Garas, I was to hand the chest over to the National Gallery after preparing a detailed list of its contents. As I was arranging the 20'

h-Century Hungarian Artists Abroad exhibition almost day and night, I simply had no time for this. For safekeeping, I put the chest on the top of the cupboard in my museum office. The chest remained there longer than it should have, as I failed to draw up the list, and I did not really mean to pass it on until thoroughly investigating its contents. (As a result of these investigations, I later published a study on Tihanyi including some of the documents the chest contained.)

22 What I was not aware of was that the National Gallery was preparing an exhibition from the Tihanyi material brought home from Paris.

23 When I accidentally learned of this, I immediately rang Zsuzsa D. Fehér, the curator of the exhibition, and let her know that the posthumous papers and chattels of Tihanyi were with me, that she could have a look at them any time, use any of them she thought the exhibition needed, and could have them taken, etc. She never came. (None of the documents were displayed at or used for the exhibition.) Nevertheless, in a week or so, a letter did come from the director general of the National Gallery, Gábor Ö. Pogány, to Dr. Klára Garas, requesting disciplinary action against me for having purposely concealed the existence of the chest from him and thereby impairing the success of the exhibition. Klára Garas called me into her office, and asked me what the truth about the chest was. I told her that it was still with me, but I had had no intention of keeping it from the National Gallery, otherwise I would never have smuggled it home. Klára Garas then asked how Zsuzsa D. Fehér had learned about the box. I told her 3. Cover of the catalogue of the 1973 Tihanyi exhibition at the HNG