Gergelyné Baktai Júlia (szerk.): Benedek Péter. Válogatás a festőről szóló irodalomból - Pest megyei múzeumi füzetek 11. (Szentendre, 1979)
Adattár
works were bought by the leading art-dealers. His art was acknowledged and appreciated by noted painters such as István Csók, József Rippl-Rónai and János Vaszary. His next exhibition arranged by Jenő Bálint followed in 1928 in the Nemzeti Szalon (National Salon). In the same year Bálint also published a book entit led „Péter Benedek the peasant-painter” presenting the painter’s activity. An exhibition of Benedek was oiganized in the Künstlerhaus of Vienna in 1929. Then in 1934 he took part in the exhibition of ’’natural geniuses” arranged at the Nemzeti Szalon. Again, it was a great success. Noted Hungarian writers such as Lajos Kassák, Pál Szabó, Áron Tamási and Jenő Tersánszky wrote about the exhibition and himself. Yet Benedek went on living his usual way of life: he painted portraits and did day-labour. Among his works those made during the years between 1910 and 1930 are the most characteristic, the most original ones. Using delicate tints he perpetuated some characteristic moments of peasant life. Jenő Tersánszky wrote about his art in a 1928 issue of the periodical Nyugat (The West): ”It is unprecedented how Péter Benedek sees the Hungarian village, how he feels the Hungarian atmosphere in a home, in a face, in a movement, in a landscape ... It is up for discussion how this artist looks at things, emphasizing everything with grotesque, oriental-like contours somehow recalling Japanese and Chinese art. How humour, sensibility, the play of gay and variegated colours whirle in his pictures, yet imbued with some philosophy and melancholy! How he understands to seize and put into shape the quintessence of things at once!” In 1938 Benedek’s works were displayed in the Netherlands. In 1941 their cottage was washed away by the floods. As a result of the war and the deteriorating financial situation he was given commissions ever more rarely. In 1949 a house was assigned to him at Cegléd, but for a long time to come he made his living by undertaking odd jobs. His next appearance as a painter was at the ’’Third Exhibition of Fine Arts and Decorative Arts Study Circles” at the Budapest Ernst Museum in 1955. The first exhibition of his collected works was arranged at Cegléd in 1964, the second, in the same town, in 1974. The Hungarian National Gallery exhibited his 132
