Mazányi Judit szerk.: Kandó Gyula (1908–1968). A festőművész hagyatékának bemutatása. (PMMI kiadványai - Kiállítási katalógusok 5. Pest Megyei Múzeumok Igazgatósága, Szentendre, 2003)

practical purposes did not satisfy him. According to memories, the moody young man's desire for self-expression was attracted with possibilities hiding deeper in art. His intellectual horizon was also widened by the leftist artist circle of Simplon-café and the visits to the seminars in Tibor Vilt's (sculptor) studio in Buda as well as by his participation in the trips organized by the leftist youth movement and lectures and flaming rows in the clubhouse of the National Trade Union of Employees. He happened to get acquainted with Endre Bálint - whom he was on friendly terms with later - at that place. The Kandó couple was also in contact with the members of the so-called oppositional group quitting Kassák's Work Circle, among others Lajos Vajda, Pál Justus, and Imre Kelemen. It was the spiritual baggage that - together with his wife - he arrived in Paris in 1932 with, in the Mecca of Hungarian artists, where he began his life-long struggle to find his own way. During their four year stay there, Kandó was painting and they tried to make a living out of some graphic work. Meanwhile, they spent a little time in Barcelona in 1933, with Kandó's father, who was working there. We hardly know any of the works of this period. One of the few is the picture titled Monk known only by photo. Though the cylindrical figures simplified into cubes appear in a genre scene, something of the mood reflects Bortnyik's much more sourly grotesque metaphysical compositions painted in the mid-1920's. They seemed not to be able to take root in the French capital and they returned home. In Hungary the still very young artist continues his painterly experiments. In his pictures known by phofos appear post-impressionist still-lifes painted with dissolved and transparent surfaces on the one hand, and on the other hand still-lifes in the accompaniment of a self-portrait applying the well-known clichés of self-determining or another self-portrait approaching the chilling objectivity of the masters of Novecenfo, scenes in the open-air recalling the classical approach of Nagybánya as well as some expressive head representations. What he was inspired by was not what he had seen in Paris. He much rather searched for the antecedents of his means of expressions on a Hungarian palette. The couple were thinking seriously of the idea of settling in Hungary. It is Kandó's certificate of the Academy of Commerce or his wife, Ata's passing an exam at the photographer József Pécsi and getting a license that testify their intention. In the spring of 1938, they applied for a state loan to become self-employed, but presumably they did not get it and this may have contributed to their decision to try to get along in the French capital again. Their second stay in Paris lasted about two years. Soon after the occupation of France by the Germans they were forced to return home. An interesting document of this period is Kandó's sketchbook of more than 200 pages with notes, which he kept like a diary from the spring of 1940 to August, in the year of the German occupation of France. On the first sheets of the book you can see depictions of Ata in the spring sunshine in the Luxembourg Garden, still presented with an unsuspecting pleasure then he made graphic notes on Coptic works of art and tessellation of Ravenna - the objects of the periods of art history preceding the age of Rafael. Self-portraits - as an experiment to determine an artist' identity - keep returning on the sheets. Several dozen sheets represent the series titled Les événements a" aujourd'hui (Stories of Today), which is completely different in its formal character though n its idea can be related to Klee's very particular Eidola series made also in 1940. In the drawings he tried to adapt the figures of the Surrealists, and mostly those of Picasso, tortured with terror, frightened with outer and inner monsters - just as pupils tried to learn the tricks from their masters in classical ages. We have not met any works realized on the basis of those sketches, there are only a few - presumably much later - works that, on the level of ideas, recall Picasso's figure forming from the 20's, combined with the metaphysical atmosphere of Surrealist pictures. The reason for it can be that he may have been dissatisfied with the result so he aimed at doing studies "based on the most simple and most objective approach of nature" instead of creating a work. What he missed in his works he summarized in the following ideas: "Let us see Picasso. All of his works - even the least valuable junk - emanate life, the artist's relation to its subject, to the vivid reality he represented. Even if this subject is the most abstract, the most spiritual and not a representation. So I must bring more life into my things". In spite of his aim, in the still-life designs - which g ve most part of the sketches - he approaches his subject with the method of conscious form analysis, in a speculative way learnt in the Bortnyik-school. Still-life remained his most important genre till about the middle of the 1950 s. Inside the range of questions concerning still-lifes there is a path split into definite stations: the early still-lifes built up of puritan motifs but of informal tone first became more expressive. Then, in the pictures recalling most of all Braque's still-lifes painted after the mid-1920's, the motifs get simplified into characteristic forms and become embedded into the frames of a pre-determined, decorative patch-rhythm in contrast with classical cubistic still-lifes, where the visual rhythm arises from the scattered pieces of view. Between 1943 and 1947, he presented mainly such works at collective exhibitions. In the last years of the war, the couple was trying to save those escaping from the persecution of Jews, even at the cost of handing over their own documents. Thus, for some months, Endre Bálint lived under the name of Gyula Kandó, and a baby was born registered to the name Mrs. Gyula Kandó. After the war, when there were a lot more possibilities for exhibitions and even Fővárosi Képtár (Gallery of the Capital) purchased one of his works, he - as a middle-aged artist - could have had a decent career. In 1947, he turned up with a large collection in Alkotás Művészház (Creation Artists' Hall) presenting mainly his still-lifes. Máriusz Rabinovszky in his introduction to the exhibition gave an exact analysis on his works: "Each picture of his is a resolute construction: definite, demonstratively sparing and strongly grotesque outlines keep together the planes shining in hard contrast colours." In Hungarian art, they can be related to, among others, Endre Bálint's approach. Although in Bálint's works there are much more intuitive dynamism. Next time the artist turns up in a photo from 1946 or 1947, in a house in Ady Endre Street, in the circle of the artists of European School joining contemporary modern efforts. The connection seems to be logical, however, there are no other documents to justify his belonging to the school. It is a fact though, that on the 7

th of May, 1947, according to the French recommendation of the Trade Union of Hungarian Artists, the Hungarian Group of Concrete Art (parting