Veszprémi Nóra - Szücs György szerk.: Vajda Lajos (1908–1941) kiállítása (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2008/6)

Biography

1930-1934 He lives in Paris in one of the seedy hotels of the Quartier Latin (Rue Lhomonde). He does odd jobs for a living, but often starves. He regularly visit the famous Musée d'Etnographie du Trocadéro and Musée Guimet, the museum of oriental art. He becomes acquainted with the Avant-Garde art of the period, the work of Picasso and Malevich, Soviet cinema. He meets the philosopher Lajos Szabó, who becomes a formidable influence on his thinking. Seeing the work of Eisenstein and Pudovkin, he wants to make films, but makes photo montages, and begins to draw his single-line sketches. The majority of the pictures he made and the books he collected in Paris are lost. 1934 He returns to Hungary. He lives in a cheap hotel in Képíró utca, where he meets Imre Ámos and Margit Anna. At the painter school of Klára Rázsó, he attends the painting classes of János Vaszary, where he meets Endre Bálint. He produces above-view still lifes in pastels and line drawings. 1935 He begins to work together with Dezső Korniss, who had returned earlier, collecting motifs in Szentendre and at Szigetmonostor, mainly depicting peasant houses and architectural detail. In the autumn, he meets his future wife, Júlia Richter, who lives in Pozsony [Bratislava]. Their regular correspondence until their marriage is an important document of his artistic ideas. 1936 He continues collecting motifs with Korniss. He develops the technique of transparent drawing montages, calling his method "constructive surrealist thematics". In the course of their discussions, they develop the idea of the "Szentendre programme", the concept of a movement making use of the Byzantine and preneoclassical traditions, elements of Avant-Garde and assuming the role of bridge between East and West, which according to their plans would extend throughout Central Europe. This is one of his most productive periods, making many drawings pastels and icon pictures. He is an avid reader, translates Chagall's Ma Vie (My Life) into Hungarian. 1937 His relationship with Korniss is strained; in the summer, he works alone in Szentendre. Though he meets Piroska Szántó, Béla Fekete Nagy and Stefánia Mándy, he is less and less confident in being able to make a movement out of his programme. The news of Stalin's purges shatter his leftist beliefs. In his choice of subject matter, Surrealism becomes prominent: fragmentary and expressive forms appear in his drawings; in the meantime, he experiments in new techniques of montage. In the autumn, he and his fiancée move into the studio of the Ámoses (36 Rákóczi utca), who live in Paris at the time; he puts up a studio exhibition in December. From the same year, he works as inbetweener for the animation films of Gyula Macskássy and Félix Kassowitz. 1938 He marries Júlia Richter (Vajda) in January. They live in wretched lodgings in József körút, Károly körút and Képíró utca. His wife takes up sewing jobs. He spends the summer in Szentendre again. Masks, monster heads, unreal landscapes appear in his pictures. For Christmas, they go to Pozsony to his wife's family.