Basics Beatrix (szerk.): Bálint Endre (1914-1986) Montázsok, grafikák. Szentendrei Képtár, 2015.02.27- 05.31. - A Ferenczy Múzeum kiadványai, D. sorozat: Múzeumi füzetek - Kiállításvezetők 8. (Szentendre, 2015)

ENDRE BÁLINT (1914-1986) - MONTAGES, GRAPHIC WORKS

„[...] I have a small, weak hope that Hungarian painting definitely will not be impoverished from what I did and what I would like to do if I had the energy [...]. ”

(Endre Bálint)

„The photomontage marks an era in the history of Hungarian avantgarde. At the end of the twenties, turning of the thirties it persistently undertakes it with a conscious programme and deliberately switches its aesthetics accordingly.

Lajos Kassák, coming home from emigration in 1926 is the one to plant the seed of the thought, that photography and cinema can enter parts of reality that paintings can not and are not meant to. And while in 1926-28 Kassák ranks the genres equally, in 1930 it shifts: he scolds his best pupils for thinking fundamentally in ’painting’ and using photography in second. In 1932 he states that photography is more the child of the era than painting. ”

(Éva Körner: Photomontage, as the Representative Genre of the Hungarian Avantgarde’s Third Wave. Exposition, Lajos Hatvany Museum, Hatvan, 24 October, 1976 - 31 January, 1977)

Endre Bálint studied graphics in the Royal Hungarian School of Applied Arts between 1930 and 1934, then after a three months trip to Paris, he attended the free school of János Vaszary. Here is where he met Lajos Vajda, who had a great influence on Bálint’s life. He regularly visited Szentendre after 1936, where he associated with the artistic circles surrounding Lajos Vajda and Dezső Korn iss. His first exhibition opened in 1938 in Budapest at the Tamás Gallery. He destroyed most of his works done before 1945. After World War II he was a founding member to European School. In 1947 he had works staged at the International Surrealist Exhibition in Paris (Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, Galerie Maeght) opened by André Breton and Marcel Duchamp, and had his own work represented in the Galerie Greuze. In 1958 the so-called Jerusalem Bible was published in the care of the Parisian Edition Labergerie with his illustrations. After 1960, he made collages and montages, mostly because of his ailing health.

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