Horváth László – H. Bathó Edit – Kaposvári Gyöngyi – Tárnoki Judit – Vadász István szerk.: Tisicum - A Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok Megyei Múzeumok Évkönyve 13. (2003)

Ferenc Chiovini

The characteristic features of Ferenc Chiovini's paintings of natural principles are the perceivable inspiration of the scene, the sensible inspiration of his paintbrush strokes, and emphasising the horizontal aspect of the composition of the landscape. He preferred painting his immediate environment. He was most attracted by the agricultural themes: anything to do with the Great Hungarian Plain, the life of villages and farmhouses. From hordes of calves at their midday rest to galloping herds of horses, from whitewashed farmhouses to narrow village streets, to street-vendors, to thrashing, and to the work of mud-workers, he painted everything. He did not only paint pictures of fishing, ferry-crossing and scouring of the riverbed, but also the scenes of the various summer holiday activities. With his boarded paint-box hung in his neck, he kept walking round the environs of Szolnok and Besenyszog until he died recording his impressions on small pulpwood boards. These painted "notices" inform us about nearly all of his artistic ideas with staggering freshness and liveliness. In fact, his realism means being faithful to the "reality of the scene" that he had lived and felt through. Naturally, he was interested in the transformation of the life of farms, the changing face of the environment, the change of the view following the industrial-agricultural investments. One could find the artist with his palette at the building of the weir with a lock of the Tisza, and at the summer or spring improvements of the Mezőnek and Palotás state farms, he painted tractor-drivers, engine-men as well as livestock caretakers. However, his heart was beating faster when he saw cattle lying around a well-sweep, galloping herds of horses, and coaches ambling on endless roads. He got the "horizontal view" in his cradle as a send-off, just as well the whitewashed walls of farmhouses, the noisy amusement of market people, and the rocking rhythm of fields of waving corn kept his imagination a prisoner from his childhood. In his last years his brushes created miracles: Unbound from the bindings of academic art, all he'd tried during his rich career, all he'd been carrying and saving, and had considered important in his art mellowed a special kind of fruit. The last collective exhibition the Gallery of Szolnok in 1979 was the climax of his art. After his death a standing exhibition opened in his studio, which was pulled down due to the reconstruction works started in 1987. His main pieces, having been handed to the Damjanich János Múzeum, Szolnok, can be seen at the Szolnok Gallery of Art, opened in 1997. The primary school of Besenyszog was named after its famous son, and they had an exhibition arranged of his collected works. In Szolnok it's the Chiovini Gallery selling pieces of fine and applied art that honours his name. 421