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

6. Lajos Tihanyi: Portrait of Mihály Károlyi, 1924. HNG maintained in 1936. Similar evidence can be drawn from two notebooks, one used in Paris in 1927 and the other probably in New York in 1929, with the names, addresses and telephone numbers of his friends, acquaintances, possible buyers and collectors, gallery owners. (111. 5) In his somewhat childish way, he tried to manage his life, his sales, the press coverage of his few exhibitions. Much to no avail. This was partly why his letters and personal notes took on an increasingly bitter tone as the years passed. In 1927-29, it is obviously corresponding with a young woman called Cécile Harphan that attracted most of his attention (at least, he painstakingly kept all the notes and letters she had written him - in French and most of them illegibly).

26 It is from a letter by Cécile that we know of a distressing event: the many drawings he had given her were burnt to ashes in an American picture-framer shop at end of 1928 or the beginning of 1929.

27 Later on, however, he wrote desperate letters to his friend, the writer and journalist György Bölöni asking him to save him from utter destitution. From the order sheets, notebook entries, the drafts of letters he sent, the ones he received, and the critiques on his work, we can approximately reconstruct whom he had known, whom he maintained good relations with, whom he was angry with in particular (e.g. Lajos Kassák, an emblematic figure of Hungarian avant-garde), whom he remained friends with, and whom he lost interest in. It is also possible to gather how his artistic concerns and approach changed in the course of his stay in Budapest, Berlin, Paris and New York. The names in his various lists include many I have never heard of, but equally many who are well-known personalities. It is certainly clear that Tihanyi made friends with not only artists and critics, and that the circle of his friends - and interests - was much broader, stretching from former prime minister Mihály Károlyi (111. 6) to the Polish-German art critic Adolphe Basler, to name only two extremes. Writers, politicians, photographers, architects, art historians belonged to his circle. When listing them, it should be taken into account that he had many friends and acquaintances he never mentioned in his letters or elsewhere, and, even though no trace of them remains, they did exist, and probably played a significant role in various periods of his life (this is particularly true of his many female friends). After his emigration, he continued to maintain (at least some degree of) contacts with many of his Hungarian friends and acquaintances, with writers such as Jenő Tersánszky Józsi, György Bölöni and his wife, Itóka, Sándor Márai; with painters like Róbert Berény, Béla Czóbel, Rudolf Diener-Dénes, László MoholyNagy, Henri Nouveau; critics Lajos Fülep and Ernő Kállai; the collector Lajos Hatvány; the museologists Simon Melier and Elek Petrovics; the architect József Vágó; as well as Alexander Korda, the editor of Periszkóp György Szántó, the Paris and New York art-dealer Joseph Brummer, etc. Photographers stood out as a special group among Tihanyi's friends - with André Kertész, Brassai' (Gyula Halász), Ergy (Erzsi) Landau among them, but even Moholy-Nagy can be reckoned with here (perhaps the painter's former studies in photography had had a role in choosing them). From among the politicians, Tihanyi had made a drawing of Tibor Szamuely, a leading figure of the 1919 Council Republic, and had a life-long friendship with Mihály Károlyi. The network of foreign friends and buyers was equally extensive, and I wish to name only a few of the more important figures belonging to it. I would first mention Adolph Basler, who was actually Czóbel

's great friend;

28 then the American art-critic, collector and avant-garde photographer Alfred Stieglitz; another photographer, Berenice Abbot; as well as Jean Arp, Alexander Archipcnko, Antoine Bourdelle, Albert Gleizes, Jacques Lipschitz, Louis Marcoussis, Oskar Kokoschka (111. 7), Mikhail Larionov; Henri-Pierre Roche (the author of Jules et Jim), who mostly made a living from selling Brancusis; Brancusi himself and his Japanese photographer friend Yasuo Kunioshy, his sculptor and gallery-owner friend Isamu Noguchi, who moulded Tihanyi's portrait; the famous American collector and co-founder of the Société Anonyme, Katherine S. Dreier; Peggy Guggenheim; Friedrich Kiesler; the Austrian stage designer Ivan Göll (with whom he quarrels in his letters; 111. 8); Tristan Tzara (Colour Plate XIII); Henry Miller; the owner of the Galerie Goldschmidt; Jan Slivinsky, who owned the music shop and gallery Le Sacre du Printemps, and who exhibited his work; Igor Stravinsky; and the French Communist writer Henri Vaillant-Couturier, who corresponded with him (presumably even wanted him to be invited to Moscow). Tihanyi knew scores of other interesting and colourful personalities; I have mentioned the ones who in one way or another appear in the material of his chest. Apart from the written material, it is worth mentioning some of the models of the drawings brought back to Hungary: Endre