Murádin Jenő - Szücs György: Nagybánya 100 éve (Miskolc-Nagybánya, 1996)

With bringing up a line of abundant sources, the book enables the exploration and re visualization of the sites. Due to the considerably reduced number of authentic whittnesses and the changes in regional and urban environment, the authors were guided by the principle to depict the scenes of the stories and the motives that inspired the birth of the magnificient works of art here while there still has something been left, in their "last hors". From this experimental approach, the artistic geography of Nagybánya is evolving. Due to the changes of the past one hundred years, however, the reconstruction remains to be of theoretical character giving but an orientation of what the Nagybánya School of Painting had really been in its full splendeur. Since - and this is just a few of the examples - the panorama of the town viewed from the side of the Virághegy (Flower Hill) is no longer the same as the one that could be admired by the art students residing there; the site of the art studio of the Hollósy School of Painting once arranged in a hay-stack is shown today only by its paths paved with stones and the clearing not yet grown together; or the miners' houses with a bun-shaped roof at Veresvíz - the ones known to us from paintings by Sándor Ziffer, Vilmos Csaba Perlrott or masters of minor significance - can be seen today only as a rare sample. Only the wellpreserved atmosphere of the town's main square (the "middle ages left here" as put into words by the poet Sándor Petőfi), the old houses, spires, vaulted cellar entrances remind us of the picturesque sight left behind. The topographic survey, the book gives, is an account of the most frequently depicted natural, regional and urban details and the most eye-catching picture backgrounds. In addition to their historical and geographical description, it tries to discover how vivid the detail, painted so often, is in the mémoires of the colleagues - painters, writers, contemporaries. This is the way how the book depicts the treasure of motives, the collection of examples in which Veresvíz, Kereszthegy and Virághegy, Liget, Cinteremkert, the Felsőbánya Street overlooking the hills, the bank of Zazar, the vivid market place and even the cemeteries (where the "large shadows" rest as put into words by the acknowledged writer József Tersánszky) are included. Photographs taken on the spot (current photo) and reproductions of the original paintings produced in Nagybánya are put together, one close to the other. Pictures and related descriptions bring the repetitive impressions of marvell ous transformation, in an endless form, into tangible proximity making us feel how the perceived reality is being transformed into a visual one.