Mazányi Judit (szerk.): A felfedezett Duna-parti kisváros. A 20. századi magyar művészet Szentendréről nézve - Ferenczy Múzeum kiadványai, C. sorozat: Katalógusok 3. (Szentendre, 2013)
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early dynamic tightly plastic compositions changed into passion-reflecting toivnscapes worked out in thick layers of paint around 1935. In the course of time, these pictures became expressive visions painted with more and more simple means. In the mid-1930's, young artists who had not regarded the Nagybánya tradition as a starting point discovered the town. Besides modern French art, they considered the contemporary results of European avant-garde as well. Among them, Dezső Korniss and Lajos Vajda turned up in Lajos Kassák''s Work Circle at the end of the 1920s then, after a longer stay in Paris returned to Hungary. It was in 1934 that Dezső Korniss came to Szentendre. In 1935, Lajos Vajda followed him. What attracted them were not the painterly possibilities of the view of the town. Applying the technique of montage, they constructed associative compositions from the motifs of traditional and sacred elements of existence and those of ordinary objective world and called their method constructive surrealistic subject. The result of their mutual intellectual achievement, which can be compiled from the details ofVajda's letters is called "Szentendre programme" by the profession. Following the example of Bartók and Kodály's way of collecting folk songs the two artists' aim was to create modern Hungarian fine arts with a synthesis based on the results of eastern and western contemporary art as well as on Hungarian folk art. However, the shadow of World War II soon forced them to give up their ideas. Both of them chose an individually interpreted and lonelier way of Surrealism. While Vajda's oeuvre was finished with a series of charcoal drawings with associative force and balancing on the border of non-figurativeness, Korniss continued searching the picture-constructing and concept-carrying roles of visual elements. From 1936 on, other young artists joined them as well, whose art at that time was completely different from the aims of Vajda and Korniss. One of them was Imre Amos, who after symbolic dreams created mature works developing in the direction of expressive prophecies and his wife, Margit Anna forever seeking her own identity in her role-playing self-portraits or Endre Bálint, who was working at that time with an expressive dynamism. Most of them - especially Endre Bálint in his mature period - were influenced by Vajda's art. After the war, all of them had an active part in the group named European School working in Budapest, whose aim was to embrace the modern endeavors of contemporary Hungarian art. The flourishing of the art life of Szentendre was also broken because of the war. From 1945, the Society of Szentendre Painters was reorganized. Some of the earlier members (Onódi, Pándy, Jeges, Rozgonyi, Bánáti, Sverák) were replaced by new ones (Ilosvai Varga, Margit Gráber, Pál Miháltz, Miklós Göllner, Ernő Schubert, Kmetty, Béla Bán, Korniss, Rudolf Diener Dénes, Vilmos Perlrott Csaba) several of whom had already worked in Szentendre. Béla Czóbel - who was an example and had lived in the town since 1940 - was elected to be the chairman. Géza Főnyi was chosen an associate chairman. Béla Czóbel, who arrived in the town as a mature artist, started from Nagybánya then belonged to the "Eights", who represented the modern endeavors of the beginning of the previous century. He had been to Holland and Germany, and regarded Paris his second home -from the beginning to his death. His early works exerted an influence on several artists appearing in Szentendre. The Society of Szentendre Painters existed till 1951. From 1952 on, the centralized organizations of the dictatorial state took over supporting the colony, which has been functioning up to the present day. If we imagine a scale with the post-Nagybánya way of thinking at one end and a strictly constructed visual order at the other, we can say that the majority of the artists preserved a moderate modernism - compared with socialist realism. At the turn of the 1950's, and 1960’s, two local artists, László Balogh's and Pál Deim's careers started. In their mature periods, they focus on problems appearing in the oeuvres of Vajda, Korniss and Barcsay. László Kósza Sipos, painter, and Ádám Farkas, sculptor, who was influenced by structuralism, had also been educated on the intellectual traditions of Szentendre. From the end of the 1950's, an art historical evaluation of the tradition of Szentendre art started - the result of which was that by the 1970's Szentendre had been acknowledged as a determining headquarters of modern Hungarian art even though the opposing opinions were sometimes extraordinarily narrow-minded. In 1969, newcomers (among them János Pirk, László Hajdú, Imre Kocsis, Tamás Asszonyi, Pál Deim, Andreas Papachristos and Endre Lukoviczky) moved to the so-called New Artist Colony built by the state and the old colony reconstructed in 1972 also had new artists (like István Csík, József Bartl, Károly Klimó, József Baska, József Buhály). From 1968 on, the young artists who later took part in founding Vajda Lajos Studio in 1972 turned up at open-air exhibitions (István efZámbó, László fe Lugossy, András Wahorn, János Aknay, Gábor Matyófalvi, György Holdas). The artists, who were self-educated and were working in various branches of art (experimental film, music, performance), through the reinterpretation of traditions and neglect of taboos played an important part in the maturing process of Hungarian Neo-Avantgarde. Their works are created with amalgamating stylistic elements of Dadaism, surrealism and pop art as well as those of sub-cultures. The philosophical basis of the works of art is "life is art, art 121
