Novotny Tihamér szerk.: 10 + 1 éves a Szentendrei Grafikai Műhely (Pest Megyei Múzeumok Igazgatósága, Szentendre, 1991)

SILKSCREENS TONED IN COLOUR (Interview with Imre Kocsis, painter and graphic artist) Tihamér Novotny: Dear Imre, my first question concerns the techniquie of the silkscreen. As far as I know silkscreen as a tchnique has been closely connected with Hard Edge and Pop Art all over the world. How has the technique spread in Hungary and who have been the first applicants? Imre Kocsis: I think the technique has merely been perfected by Pop Art for it has been well-known and applied by artists, mainly Germans and Americans. It became an autonomous graphic genre in the thirties and that was the time when in international terminology it was given the names Siebdruck, serigraphy, silkscreen. In textile industry, however, the process has been used much earlier, moreover, we have data testifying that the Chinese, as in many other cases, have preceded us, T.N.: What is the difference, after all, between 16th century Japanese and Chinese silkscreen, Siebdruck produced in Berlin in 1920 ana American serigraphy in the 1930s. / K.: The Chinese used silkscreen technique in pattern printing similarly to Mediaeval coaices in Europe but they did not use a cut-out printing form to process the colour, they printed through the silk onto the unmasked areas, And they used it in printing recurring motifs exclusively, regardless to the fact whether they printed on paper or other materials. The Siebdruck of Berlin was the first autonomous graphic initiative and license in its own time. All the same, it was the Americans who discovered the real characteristics of the genre: the specific rendering demanaea by the silkscreen. The genre itself spread all over the woria during ana after World War II, for it was easy to apply this technology anywhere. It is simple indeed: if they made an inscription on something transparent, e. g. glass or nylon foil and with the help of a photosensitive emulsion and sunlight they could expose it on canvas they merely needed a table on which they could print their silkscreen. As to when it appeared in Hungary, as far as I know, the first initiatives were made in the late sixties in the workshop of Fajó and his friends in Benczúr Street. (See Budapest Workshop 1974-1981, János Fajó, Tamás Hencze, Imre Bak, Ilona Keserű, András Mengyán). They could get only very low quality materials. They could get textile for the screen as it was used in textile industry but they had no paint at all. They tried Wallkyd and tempera. Previously the Applied Arts Co. had a workshop where they produced posters for labour safety by using tempera and silkscreen. An interesting item, though, with some reference to Szentenare that this workshop gave „work" for artists „in need", like the former member of the European School, Dezső Korniss (!) who was badly tolerated by the contemporary cultural regime. He had to paint leaves of straw on pre-printed yellow strawstacks for a few forints,But this was, after all, a source of revenue for him. At the same time in Europe the technique was applied on a high level indeed. T. N.:\ know that you were the founder, or rather the organizer of the Makó Artists' Colony. When did it start functioning? / /C/The first set of prints was made in 1978... T. N.: But the artists' colony had been functioning in the previous years as well...