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 - Éva BAJKAY: Collecting Avant-Garde - A Subjective History

8. Béla Uitz: Struggle, 1922. HNG home now.

35 The full oeuvre would have been far more effective! And the collection of prints and drawings of the National Gallery had a fine body of 150 early works through its continued acquisition efforts. Ever since the success of his first one-man show in 1914 (the collector Marcell Nemes bought up almost all Uitz's material), selections of drawings and some oils have kept finding their way into our museums.

36 It was only the two great fresco designs, Fishers and Builders, as well as a later version of Humankind that were put on display at the 1968 exhibition. These were found in Uitz's Moscow studio, and fit in quite well with official monumentalism.

37 The material to attract greatest attention was his work done in Vienna. It should be remembered that it needed quite some daring at the time to exhibit Abstract compositions. And these were eked out by the 19 pieces from the 37 of the Analysis series, which are a particular Hungarian development of Russian constructivism. And this did not mean all! In his 1926 and 1932 studies, János Mácza mentions some large-scale oils, often dubbed Icon Analyses?* At the National Gallery show, two of his small-scale sketches called The Analysis of a Russian Icon were on show from the Pushkin Museum. The fact was that before transporting his works to Hungary, the Pushkin Museum had bought some of his works, and thus was the permission to bring the rest given.

39 This was how a selection made by someone who had an eye for it got into the famous collection of the international arts museum in Moscow. The icon analyses were not geometric studies of actual icons, but abstract compositions of colour and form produced under the influence of old Russian art. All this brought about a great flurry in Budapest at a time when Béla Kondor attracted attention with his icon-like pictures. Unfortunately, excluding the work of Lajos Vajda, little had been said of the relation between the avant-garde and icon painting in Hungary.

40 Getting to know constructivism seemed more topical at the time.

41 After proscription under several political regimes, the school now became increasingly approachable, its leftist trend was regarded more and more important, its past connected to the 1919 dictatorship of the proletariat turned into an emphasized tradition in Hungary. The visitors of the National Gallery could now try the sweet taste of a fruit that had been forbidden: everyone could find the work valid in his or her eyes. Also, the reappraisal of expressionism had been off the agenda by then. In the 1920s, Uitz had represented a particular, autonomous constructivist aspiration blending with it, pointing in different directions and authenticated by his direct participation in the classical, international avant-garde. In the fifty years that had passed in the meantime, his mediation between the avantgardistes of the West and the East had been successfully sunk into oblivion. It is still little known that that he was the first to publish Malevich's Suprematist Manifesto in Vienna, using home-made clichés to print the illustrations, the Constructivist Manifesto of Rodchenko and Stcpanova, as well as the Realistic Manifesto of Pevsner and Gabo.

42 Nor did Uitz himself bring this up, it all turned out from the records, papers and photos of the period (though he did hold on to many of these). It was upon seeing old reproductions of his oils made in Vienna that I started to inquire about them. After the exhibition, the Hungarian state bought a part of the exhibits for the National Gallery, and the artist himself bequeathed another four hundred to it.

43 Then Uitz returned to Moscow, and decided to come back to Hungary for good at the end of 1969. The next task was to wind up all his material in his studio. The artist lived in what used be a classroom: an iron bed, a chair, a stool, an easel were his belongings - the shocking accessories of destitution; plus heaps of paper in total chaos. I was asked to put this in order, for the master had appreciated my archivist endeav9. Béla Uitz: Icon Analysis with the Holy Trinity, 1922. HNG