Heves megyei aprónyomtatványok 8/I

meaning of the Soviet model, the presentation is infiltrated by nostalgical lyrical elements. One obvious reason for this is that while the Soviet work is a photo, the Hungarian one is a painting. Constructive framework: the symbol of the omnipresent organizing principle which culminates in socialist society. Its validity is not questioned by Munka- circle members either. This principle has already been manifested in Hungarian picture architecture on an abstract way and later the utilitarian character of the Soviet example became also of influence (see the Scene-design of Kassák from 1924, picture No 8) and now at the times of the necessity of a propagandist^ effect, the constructive framework becomes important especially as the organizing principle of life-material.

The construction present in an open or "disguised" way is prevailing in the paintings already mentioned above (Korniss, Trauner, Hegedűs) or in sociophotos (the photo-book of Munka), but even more outright in works of complex techniques. Lajos Vajda, in his 1930 montage, obviously on the influence of El Lissicky's "Cloud-iron-house"-design,

composed into the circle-form of totality the directive diagonals of activity and closed into this — and this is the new and unique idea of Vajda — the photo details dramatized as the human happening of the present (see pictures No 9 and 10). (He was the only one taking part in the 1930 exhibition of the "progressive youth" already mentioned above with a par excellence photomontage — supposedly his work reproduced here is the "Space and form" mentioned in the catalogue.) That photo should become a montage constituent within painting had already been invented by cubism but the method brought new results in the hand of the Munka-circle members. Here we can only speak of an indirect Soviet example, an inspiration, rather. Cubism applied photo as a trompe /' oeii, a subordinate detail, while the Munka- youth gave a contrary meaning to a seemingly traditional painting composition by the inserted vulgar daily material. (See by Korniss and Trauner, pictures No 2 and 3, in the former the glued-in material represents a slum- detail cut out from a newspaper. Unfortunately György Kepes later cut off the photomontage parts from his picture of a symilar system.)

And lastly, the greatest influence exercised on Hungarian photomontage was that of Soviet film's with its contrastive-emphasizing shocking methods and new symbolic elements. According to Lajos Lengyel's telling, it was Lajos Gró who had drawn the attention of the members of the Munka-circle to the expressive content of Pudovkin's "worm's-eye-view". (This method was used by Kassák on the collage cover of Gró's book: "Russian film art" (see picture in the catalogue of exhibits).

But the most important content and form element of Soviet film asserted by contemporary Hungarian photomontage was the masses. Just as the surface of medieval altar-pieces is covered with angel faces adjusted to an ideal perspective now the pictures of Soviet films and surface of collages of a revolutionary thematics are covered with the heads of "worker-peasent masses". Kassák's "Munka-Document" (see picture No ■11), the cover collage to Lajos Gró's film book and Lajos Lengyel's collage