Mészáros Júlia, N.: 35 éves a Győri Művésztelep. Történeti áttekintés, művek, életrajzi adatok, beszámoló a jubileumi találkozóról - Győri művészettörténet 4. (Győr, 2003)

N. Mészáros Júlia: A Győri Művésztelep működésének és alkotótevékenységének 35 éve

JÚLIA N. MÉSZÁROS: 35 Years of Operation and Creative Activity at the Artists’ Symposium of Győr

Examining the 35 years of operation and activity of the Artists’ Symposium of Győr, we can distinguish several remarkably different periods. The first one lasted from the establishment in 1969 to 1975. Its main feature is that it was first of all Transdanubian teaching artists and art teachers of primary schools who participated in the creative work, determining their methodology jointly. That imitated above all the methodology of the traditional academic education,

i.e. it was based on drawing models, making croquis and drawing, making watercolours, more seldom oil paintings of small and medium sizes directly on venues of the city or its outskirts chosen personally and on introduction to one another. Since the artists’ symposium did not have a leader of art qualification, a single professional art historian or an artist with a vocation who could have set professional objectives and functions and arranged artistic programmes realizing them, the participants themselves assessed their own and one another’s perfor-mances in long evening discussions, learning their lessons and refining the two, later four-week creative programme, which from the year of the start was closed with an exhibition presenting the results of the work at the artists’ symposium following the symposium and next year’s exhibition of works finished at home.

Besides the acknowledgement of the enthusiastic activity of the city and county’s leadership and direct organizers, this period was the time of sounding out and constructive use of subjective experiences with regard to the conception, determination of the participants, provison of the background of work at the artists’ symposium, the programme, the system of connections, the formation of the standard of work at the symposium, which met the initial two modest objectives easily and immediately: first-ly it wished to become a new regional symposium of pedagogues teaching art and of art teachers as well as a decisive factor of the increase of the number of local exhibitions and art events. (1) Pedagogues and art teachers were glad about the opportunity that the intensive work at the artists’ symposium in summer would keep their knowledge on the level and compensate them for the time deprived of their artisitic development during the year, therefore the participation in the artists’ symposium of Győr motivated them unbelievably (2), and the leadership of the city hoped that the artists’ symposium would animate the local artistic life, which the annual collective exhibition presenting mainly artists from Győr, more seldom one-person exhibitions at a cultural centre, and later at the Exhibition Hall of Győr had been called to satisfy, since the János Xántus Museum meeting museum functions of the city as well (County Board of Museum Directors) had not at all dealt with contemporary art until 1976 and had not had a temporary exhibition room either.

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