Zwickl András szerk.: Árkádia tájain, Szőnyi István és köre 1918–1928. (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2001/3)

TANULMÁNYOK - FERENC ZSÁKOVICS: "The Young Hungarian Etchers" - The Renewal of Graphical Art after the First World War

shortage of materials prevented the resumption of work for a few more years even afterwards. Viktor Olgyai opened his class in the Autumn of 1921, welcoming students interested in graphical techniques." Owing to him that "the machines were brought down from the attic, and he was the one who peddled for money to maintain the much-suffered, delicate machines; he worked as a day-labourer, mixing the paint and, even more importantly, gathered around him the most talented young artists at the Academy of Fine Arts. This was how work resumed, in great poverty and biblical isolation a few years ago," Károly Lyka recalled in the mid1920s. "While bread was often a scarcity on their tables, faith and determination were never on short supply on the young artists' drawing tables. Olgyai was their educator, not their teacher. His rich soul radiated the art fanaticism: for them art became the content, rather than the purpose, of life."'" Functioning in the first half of the 1920s, the Olgyai class was regarded as the cradle of Hungarian graphic art already by contemporary art critics and art historians.

26 This was where those graphic artists who scored great success at exhibitions home and abroad between the two world wars first acquainted themselves with the various techniques, notably low relief (etching, engraving and dry point). Among the first ones to join the master after having received their teaching certificate were Vilmos Aba-Novák, Károly Patkó, Nándor Lajos Varga, Jenő Tarjáni Simkovics and Gyula Komjáti Wanyerka. The growing popularity of prints and the improving prospects of marketing encouraged the painting students and future drawing instructors emerging from the classes of Gyula Rudnay, István Csók and János Vaszary - including Elemér F. Antal, Erzsébet Aszódi Weil, Jenő Barcsay, Géza Bene, István Csóka, Béla Emanuel, Tibor Gallé, Gyula Hintz, Kálmán Istókovits, Dávid Jándi, Zoltán Kaveczky, Antal Medgyesi Schwartz, Pál Miháltz, Imre Nagy and Endre Vadász - to master the favourite etching technique. The modern workshop equipped with press, good-quality plates of copper and zinc, paint and paper attracted the students. Until Viktor Olgyai's death in 1 929, almost a hundred students visited the workshop according to the evidence of the Academy's archives' , and even acknowledged artists sought the master's advice in professional and technical matters. The recollections of artists who once worked there vividly bring back the everyday life in the workshop." According to Jena Barcsay, "Serious work was done in Viktor Olgyai's class. Aba-Novák, Nándor Varga, and István Szőnyi all were intelligent enough to realise that drawing skills had to be acquired at the appropriate moment in time, because it would be too late to start at a more mature age. They were drawing from morning till night, after model. One or two nudes could always be found in the studio. They made studies of the structure of the human body, and knew its working intimately." "Our melancholic teacher with a propensity to mysticism rarely showed up amongst us," Ralph Teleki described the master. "It was something of a feast when I got into his office for a conversation so that I could listen to his inimitable contemplations of occult philosophy about graphics in the mysterious twilight of the staff room. (...) The most outstanding of the contemporary generation of graphic artists worked at the Academy back then. The atmosphere was charged with the countless talented students' artistic ambitions."

49 People could see many of the graphic sheets produced at the Academy already as early as 1922 and 1923 in smaller galleries, while larger collections were presented to the public in 1923 and 1924 at the Academy Students Exhibition held in the Ernst Museum.'" "Despite the magnetism that he exerted on his students, Viktor Olgyai, being a model teacher, never let his powerful personality oppress his young students. It is true that, since he made hardly any graphics anymore (he switched to painting completely), his students could not draw direct inspiration from his example. Certainly, not one among his students produced works that resembled his art, but nor did the art of the individual students resemble each other's," Artúr Elek writes in his comprehensive study." Eva Bajkay has described the students' works as "the peculiar Hungarian graphical tendency mixing tradition and modernity," which showed, on the one hand, the classic masters' powerful influence and on the other hand reflected, to a moderate extent, the latest results of the recent development in Avant-garde art.'' The master set the most wonderful sheets of the outstanding ló'

1 and 17''-century engravers as examples for his students. "He regarded Rembrandt as the greatest of the great; it was through his art that Olgyai demonstrated the potentials of graphics in its fullest and most perfect form."" Several of the etchings made at the time, especially the biblical compositions, portraits and landscapes, revealed that young students attached extreme importance to these examples. In addition to studying the publications of the Academy of Fine Arts' Library and the reproductions and reprints in Viktor Olgyai's possession'

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, the students could also take a direct and close look at the Dutch artist's virtuoso compositions, when they visited, on Olgyai's recommendation, the graphics collection of the Museum of Fine Arts and the representative exhibitions of classic etchings. 35 In a letter to Nándor Lajos Varga who was abroad at the time, Zoltán Kaveczky describes his visit to the exhibition //*" Century Dutch Graphics (1925) as