Bujdosné Pap Györgyi - Császi Irén (szerk.): Agria 48. (Az egri Dobó István Vármúzeum Évkönyve - Annales Musei Agriensis, 2013)
H. Szilasi Ágota: „Mese-mese, mesd el...” Lesznai Anna képmeséi a hatvani Hatvány Lajos Múzeumban
Ágota H. Szilasi „Mese-mese, mesd el...” Anna Lesznai’s picture tales in the Lajos Hatvány Museum, Hatvan Lesznai Anna's legacy of fine and decorative arts got into the museum of a Hungarian coutry town, Hatvan in 1974, among adventurous circumstances. The museum had been founded only a few years before, and in search of its image, suddenly realized its responsibility when, thanks to a resident, got in the possession of an art collection that had survived both the war’s vicissitudes and the communist transition’s idiotic culture destruction. Among the sheets there were graphics of Oskar Kokoschka, László Moholy-Nagy, Anna Lesznai and Tibor Gergely. The young museum director, Ákos Kovács, managed to contact Tibor Gergely, living in New York, who was invited for an exhibition in the city. The vicissitudinous history of the drawings began to reveal and, in connection with the works, the walks of life of prominent personalities of sugar factory founder and former center-of-town hall-owner Hatvany family - Lajos Hatvány, literary historian and patron of arts and Ferenc Hatvanyi, painter, art collector, and their cousin, Anna Lesznai, poet, writer, fine and decorative artist. After the successful exhibition Tibor Gergely, Anna Lesznai’s husband, presented the artist’s nearly 2400 pieces legacy to the museum. (Manuscripts, diary notes were donated to the Museum of Literature). During the past forty years, Lesznai’s oeuvre has been explored from many aspects. A number of art historians and literary scholars researched and research her life, her relation to the most progressive intellectuals, her many-sided art, her poetry arising from a charming personality, her theoretical writings (published in the literary journal Nyugat, of which the founding patron was Lajos Hatvany), her tales, her Secession-symbolic drawings, embroidery designs, paintings rooted in Hungarian folk art motifs and meanings, based on content and format considerations. Lesznai was bound to tales, her life was imbued with a kind of pantheistic fairy tale approach. Her study on fairy tale almost achieving philosophical depths (published in the Nyugat in 1918) and her tales and paintings for the stories - the same quality as the text - are outstanding in her artistic oeuvre. Two of her fully elaborated fairy tales were publised in book form, A kis Pillangó utazása Lesznán és a szomszédos Tündérországban (The Little Butterfly Travels Leszna And The Neighboring Fairyland) in 1913, and Mese a kisfiúról és a bútorokról (Tale Of The Little Boy And The Furniture) in 1918, featuring paintings and graphics through the stories, which are outstanding pieces of Secession book art. Hatvan museum’s art collection contains a great number of tale-connected works that are 225
