Gergelyné Baktai Júlia (szerk.): Benedek Péter. Válogatás a festőről szóló irodalomból - Pest megyei múzeumi füzetek 11. (Szentendre, 1979)

Adattár

Peasant painter Péter Benedek

Péter Benedek was born at Úszód (Pest County) in 1889. His father was a mason and carpenter, his mother worked in the fields on a third-part basis. He was the third of their six children. As early as at the age of 7 or 8 he started drawing making sketches of what he saw about himself in the village. After prematurely leaving school, he went hoeing or worked as a day-labourer at his father’s side. Meanwhile, in his spare time, he kept on drawing; he made pictures of the people of the village, who at that time still wore the Hungarian national dress, and of the events of village life.

Aged 18 he applied for enrolment in the school of design but was refused because of his age. This is how he recalled the event: ”1 was embittered very much . . . yet I continued to paint and draw, my blood urged me on, it lay in my blood . . . Many people asked me whether there was any reason in my doing so much drawing? Will I be paid for it, they enquired. I did not care about what they said, I was driven by my instinct or what you might call ’’artistic malady”.

In 1915 he was taken to a Budapest ironworks to do war labour service. There he made drawings of his work-mates. ’’Many of them hated and opposed me. They even showed my drawings to the shop-foreman.” It was at this time that he made the acquaintance of Jenő Bálint, a head clerk, who from then on helped him as a patron of arts. Bálint succeeded in getting him exempted from war work and also to return to his native village. Although in 1916 he was enlisted and sent on military duty to Transylvania they kept in touch.

Péter Benedek’s first exhibition was held at the Alkotás Művészház (’’Creation” House of Artists) in Budapest in 1923. Displaying 75 pictures, the exhibition was a complete success: his

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