Heves megyei aprónyomtatványok 8/I

from the claim to becoming a social factor, for propaganda and influence. Both theme and (potenciál) public has to be different from that of traditional genres. The model is Soviet art, the form and symbol structure of constructivism and also film offering completely new possibilities of insight and display. The propagandistic quality of Soviet art and its measurable efficacity also served as an exemple. These factors, just because of the par excellence social committedness of bearing art could not be asserted in an alien structure with an identical weight. But from the multitude of exemples and possibilities there were still many to pick.

In Hungary naturally no film "a la Pudovkin" (or Eizenstein) could be made and thus photo (sociophoto, photogram, multiple exposure) and especially photomontage making a complex use of photographic means and utilizing film language is carrying the banner. The form system of it mostly followed the Soviet example but the influence of Moholy-Nagy and the Bauhaus is also manifest. The par excellence practisioners of photomontage are Kassák and the youth of the Munka-circle. In its thematics the main role is played by social appeal but the scale ranges to advertisement design. (For example, Kassák himself is also making such designs who, paradoxically, regards his own advertisement work analogous with the aims of Soviet propaganda. This is the point of contact of the Munka-circle and Sándor Bortnyik who, with his Bauhaus learning, lives for a while in the hope of the benefits of Machine Age, he is engaged in poster design, and later makes ironical provisory pictures and photomontages. For . example the ones only having remained as catalogue items: Midnight motor-cyclist, 1926, and Chaplin, 1928.)

So in the works of the Munka-circle the example of Soviet symbol, form and technical model is dominant.

Symbols

Plate. To the otherwise traditional picture by Sternberg (Still Life, 1919, see picture No I) the attention was obviously drawn by the idea latent in the subject. On the 1930 exhibition of the "progressive youth" in the Tamás Gallery Dezső Korniss (see picture No

2) and Sándor Trauner (see picture No

3) exhibited similar still lives.

The plate is the symbolic form of spiritual and physical food. Its content spreads from the representation of an elementary stage of life to the referring to its totality. With Korniss the object takes a transitory shape between a sociological symbol (this is later on developed to perfection in Gyula Derko- vits's "Still life with fish", see picture No 4) and the symbol stage of a superior spiritual totality evolving from physical existence. In Trauner's picture the case is obviously the latter (and in the middle of the 30ies this meaning will return in Vajda's drawing montages of Szentendre, see picture No 5).

Hand. This subject, after its many changes of meaning throughout the centuries became in Soviet art the symbol of creative force conquering nature and all technical difficoulties. Béla Hegedűs was obviously inspired by Lissicky's Vhutemas book cover design (see picture No 6). Hegedűs, like his ideal, places a technical instrument into the creative hand (see picture No 7) but the picture lacks the clear-cut engineering