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
The conditions of operation had not to be cared about at this time, as the artists were provided with cheap board and lodging at a hall of residence, and the participants brought along the materials and tools necessary for creation. After bringing the first symposia to a successful conclusion, the symposium became a more or less permanent ensemble of persons approved by the two leaders in charge of organization and execution for a long time (Károly Góczán used to be a teacher of the department of technology of education, later audiovisual department of the Győr Teacher Training Institute, and Lajos Finta, official, consellor of the Department of Education of the Executive Committee of the City Council, then chief consellor of the Cultural Office) and the different control committees (local and county party committee, Revising Institute of Fine and Applied Art, Association of Fine and Applied Art, Art Endowment of the People’s Republic of Hungary, the local cultural leadership), which in this form, as regards their actual significance, could hardly lead to a high artistic standard, it rather conserved the view of artificially low level corresponding to social and political expectations and the level of contemporary art as they wanted to represent it. From the middle of the 70s, however, the demand occured on part of both the city’s cultural leadership and the symposium’s participants that the organization should be more open to artists of modern attitude, artists from the whole country and the twin towns of Győr should be allowed to participate in the symposium, as well as to create in more media. This led to a new situation in respect of both the organization and the control on the one hand, held out promises of change to more professional art on the other, further of participation of professional artists working in other media of fine art besides the presence of painters. Although the first artists arrived from Erfurt and Meiningen, GDR and the region of Trencsén, Slovakia, on the suggestion of the local party committees, it took some years until artists from the German, Finnish, Polish, French and Romanian twin towns of Győr were also allowed to participate regularly, from 1976 the first freelance sculptors and painters with academic qualification and modern attitude, such as Mária Lugossy, Zoltán Bohus, Tibor Csiky, János Fajó, István Nádler, Antal Lux and István Haraszti appeared at the Győr symposium, thinking about the development and improvement of their optimal working conditions in Győr, directing the attention to the unexploited industrial background and having a share in and forming the change of profile of the artists’ symposium of Győr. The first period of the Artists’ Symposium of Győr hardly resulted in more than a new place of creative activity was established where the selected participants could work for some weeks every summer, motivating one another. The existence of a new Hungarian creative symposium, however, meant far more at the end of the 60s and at the beginning of the 70s, in fact, looking back on the beginnings, its establishment and annual reorganization can be evaluated as an 73
