Bakos Katalin - Manicka Anna szerk.: Párbeszéd fekete-fehérben, Lengyel és magyar grafika 1918–1939 (MNG, Warszawa–Budapest, 2009)
II. HÁROM SZÓLAMBAN A LENGYEL ÉS MAGYAR MŰVÉSZETRŐL, MŰVÉSZETTÖRTÉNETRŐL ÉS TÖRTÉNELEMRŐL - Tokai Gábor: Lengyelország és Magyarország művészeti kapcsolatai a két világháború között
(and director of the National Salon) compiled an objective volume. Among the dozens of articles - most being polite descriptions and moderate appreciations with sporadic critical remarks - the critical writing of Warsaw university professor Stefania Zahorska is saliently outstanding. 29 The aesthete held a lecture during the Warsaw showing about the most recent trends of Hungarian art including the exhibited material of KUT (New Society of Artists). 30 In her review, she pointed out the randomness of the selection of the retrospective material, and in regard to contemporaries - besides badly missing the works of leftist artists already widely recognized abroad - she only deemed the room of the KUT works worth mentioning. The rest of the rooms, she claimed, "are jammed with examples of hopeless epigonism, without any trace of a creative thought or initiative." No summary of that exhibition could be more appropriate and incisive today either. To alleviate though her judgment, we may add that in the room of graphic and applied arts several prominent Hungarian etchers were also represented. In the eye of the Bethlen government progressive art committed itself by supporting the leftist republic in 1919, and the example of the novecento was not yet exerting extensive influence, hence only the conservative-academic artists were considered officially acceptable. This attitude is reflected by Nándor Gyöngyösi's writing in Képzőművészet 3 ^, too, judging the overrepresentation of "extremist artists around KUT" in the representative Hungarian exhibition in Poland inappropriate and unjust. It is characteristic of the double standards of conservative Hungarian art evaluation that in his cited writing published in the next issue of the same periodical, Miklós Kállay laid stress on the Rytm artists in the Polish exhibition, whereas in her mentioned article Stefania Zahorska defined them as the Polish counterpart of Hungary's KUT. Poles had to wait twelve years before another representative Hungarian exhibition was opened, in March 1939 in Cracow and on April 22 in Warsaw. 32 Hungarian politicians were also present at the opening, turning it into a political demonstration in the strained international situation. The government commissioner of the exhibition was Tibor Gerevich, who also wrote the preface to the catalogue. 33 He reviewed the period closing with the Nagybánya art school relatively more thoroughly, pointing out the contacts with Polish art. The period between 1910 and 1920 did not even receive a negative comment. Gerevich discussed post-war art briefly by genres, but apart from the artists of the School of Rome putting novecento on their banner, he hardly mentioned any names. The list of exhibiting artists clearly reveals that the exhibition was the mirror of this attitude to Hungarian art. The organizers obviously learnt from the "mistakes" of the 1927 exhibition: the retrospective part became more informative, and it was painfully avoided to create any similar contrast to that between the KUT room and the rest earlier. An attempt was made to enliven the artistic spectrum with mediocre artists. In spite of all that, the exhibition was an enormous success in the Polish capital, as Kapronczay's summary claims. 34 Apart from major official exhibitions, there were - mostly multinational - connections among various groups of artists. In Polish art, the woodcut can be seen as the leading genre, while women artists also had a salient role. There is ample ground to presume that in both fields the relations between the two nations were tightened. As is obvious from the above, Polish art historians were aware of the importance of engraving on wood in the art of their nation, but clear-sighted Hungarian critics were also quick to recognize it. Poland was indeed entitled in the period to stage a major international woodcut exhibition. The llnd International Woodcut Exhibition 35 organized by the Institute for Art Promotion 36 was opened in Warsaw in December 1936. One of the members of the five-strong jury consisting of noted Polish artists and art historians, Stanisław Ostoja-Chrostowski expounded the criteria of selection in his introduction: they wished to present possibly all the trends in a country also taking care that the singular character of a country be outlined. 37 The statutes reveal that maximum four works not older than three years could be submitted, but it is not known how the invitation was announced and how the works were chosen. 38 The exhibition included twenty works by eight Hungarian artists. 39 The exhibits did not present the whole spectrum of Hungarian woodcut, but it
