Bakos Katalin - Manicka Anna szerk.: Párbeszéd fekete-fehérben, Lengyel és magyar grafika 1918–1939 (MNG, Warszawa–Budapest, 2009)

III. KATALÓGUS - 2. HAGYOMÁNYKERESÉS - - Utazások térben és időben

Pictures of the town KB: Italy was just as frequented the Mecca of modern Hungarian artists as France. In the political situation between the two world wars the international relations also influenced cultural politics and therefore the Hungarian state put Rome ahead of Paris. Cultural minister Kuno Klebelsberg started a scholarship for young talents to spend some time at the Hungarian Academy in Rome and get acquainted with the relics of ancient culture and a trend of modern Italian fine art held up as an example, the Novecento. In the graphic medium, the stay in Italy put a deep imprint on the oeuvres of Pál Molnár-C, Kálmán Gáborjáni Szabó, Károly Patkó and György Buday. The scenery in Patkó's etching Perugia is just as transfigured and light-imbued as were the Arcadia compositions of imaginary groves in the early 1920s. The difference is that the experience conveyed is of a real landscape bearing the weight of history. In Kálmán Gáborjáni Szabó's virtuosic wood engravings Amalfi and Seaside Town also several layers of time are superimposed. Buildings of the past, the characteristic relief formations also bearing imprints of time and events at the time of creation with the inhabitants of the depicted area are all present. There were similar renderings of Paris at that time, too. Endre Vadász created his etching in a Paris Museum in his characteristic, good-humoured but slightly ironic narrative tone with a light hand. The museum interior showing medieval exhibits does not show the Paris of modern artists but a place of pilgrimage for researchers of old masters. The townscape of the thirties as a genre of great artistic traditions equally undertook documentation, representation, depiction of exotic travel experience and nostalgia with the aim of showing up common historical and cultural traditional, lasting values. An historical atmosphere envelopes Gáborjáni's leafs of Transylvanian towns in the album Hearths of Hungarian culture, enumerating the monuments of Hungarian culture detached from the heartland. Several artists in the countryside released graphic albums of their own native towns in line with the old series of veduti. József Divéky worked in Switzerland but he deemed it important to publish his Zurich Münster, an accurately elaborate woodcut of cool elegance in an art review in Budapest. AM: Travel is the salt of our existence. Before, people used to travel only for practical reasons, e.g. on business or politics. Pilgrimages to sacred places also had a specific goal, namely penance or thanksgiving. Only in the Renaissance rich and enlightened people started travelling for pleasure. In the same time, artists started travelling to learn. Owing to this fact, art could develop and come under various influences. In the interwar period, artists either came from wealthy families, or tried to get scholarships, which would enable them to travel to Paris, which was a Mecca for artists ofthat period, and also to Italy, which had to be seen by every respectable artist. Tadeusz Cieślewski Jr went to Florence in 1927 on his honeymoon. His parents paid for the trip, and when in Italy, the artist executed a number of woodcuts devoted to Florence, and published them at his own expense in a local print house D'Azeglio in the form of a book entitled Firenza. Ludwik Tyrowicz was connected with Lviv from 1930. His trips to Italy found their reflection in two portfolios: San Gimignano and Italia. Karol Mondral's etching comes from a period when the artist lived and studied in Paris (1909-1921). In that time, he often and willingly engaged in graphic art, which he later taught in the School of Artistic Industry in Bydgoszcz. Leon Ptoszay also studied in Paris between 1936 and 1939. Stefan Mrozewski's artistic path was totally different. The Netherlands were not a popular destination for artists in that period, if people went on holiday, one rather chose Belgium and went to Ostend, "the Queen of the Belgian sea-side resorts". Meanwhile, Mrożewski travelled throughout Europe, he wentto France, England, Italy, the Netherlands, andtothe United States. He wasa wealthy man, so he could afford it. He was a member of the "Ryt" group, but he remained independent,