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
10-11. The interior of the Uitz memorial exhibition at the National Gallery, 1977. Photos: HNG Archive, inv. no.: 20726/1980 ours. Taking along an over-size tape-recorder, I did several interviews with him, 44 and gathered the press coverage of his exhibition. 45 He said he needed a co-worker, not an art historian steeped in the aesthetics of György Lukács; he had had enough of those. 46 Instead of half a year, I accepted to do the job in a month. I packed all day, reading the several copies of the documents of a life of vicissitudes, poring through his letters witnessing historical upheavals, sometimes combatively determined, sometimes pleading to be freed from Stalinist prison, discrimination, etc. Uitz was deeply attached to the analytical study sketches he had made on the basis of the golden section, Leonardo's and other renaissance masters' works, and surrounded himself with them as though they were a kind of fortress of refuge. The many rolled-up socialistrealist designs made in common studios for the Palace of Soviets or the façade of the Agricultural Exposition building from the 1940s had to be all looked at. Uitz himself could hardly tell his own works from those of others. Besides these, I kept showing the master the reproductions of his abstract works, and asking him questions on their whereabouts. For an answer, I either got a grunt or protracted silence. I asked him to take me to his flat, which was occupied by his son and his family. 47 There was no chance of that; finally, we invited his son and grandchild to the studio to say good-bye. They did not want to believe that Uitz was leaving Moscow for good, but they brought along a roll, and laid it on the floor. After they left, Uitz said to me: "Now, here's what you've been looking for!" I saw rough, old canvases, rolled up unskilfully with the painted sides facing inwards. This was how five large-scale, L5 X 1.5 metre, abstract compositions and three also large-scale oils made in the early 1930s turned up. 4X I could hardly believe my eyes! Fearful of harming them, I tried to unroll them ever so carefully. Yes, the reproduced pictures were there, five Icon Analyses, the colour effect being particularly enhanced by their gold or silver plating. (Ills. 8-9, Colour Plate XIV) Uitz had not seen his masterworks for many years. And was utterly shocked at the sight, his tears running down his cheeks. When he was imprisoned on charges of formalism for a year and a half, his partner, Oksana Pavlenko, salvaged these corpora delicti, and hid them somewhere in Moscow. No one had dared take them out ever since, and least of all was the family interested. We were vastly delighted to be able to put them on the lorry taking his personal belongings home. The restorers of the National Gallery put the canvases on stretchers, fixed up the minor damages, and the master presented three of them to the gallery. Having been the one to acquire these 12-13. Interior of the exhibition .'Avant .'garden in Mittel-Europa 1910-1930 in Munich, Haus der Kunst, 2002. Photos by Éva Bajkay
