Nagy Ildikó szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 1989-1991 (MNG Budapest, 1993)

Bajkay, Éva: FROM MEDIEVAL CATHEDRAL TO THE MODERN MECHANICAL STAGE

ÉVA R. BAJKAY FROM MEDIEVAL CATHEDRAL TO THE MODERN MECHANICAL STAGE ( Stations along a road of search, on the basis of new acquisitions of the Collection of Prints and Drawings in the Hungarian National Gallery) After the fall of the 1918/19 revolutions the classic representatives of Hungarian avantgárdé were forced to flee abroad and give up their first-hand experience of the Hungarian countryside, soil and people. Some left for political reasons, others in hope of seeing their talent unfold with greater freedom. In the new political circumstances of the post-war period the Hungarian emigrant artists wanted to fit themselves into the new environment first of all in nearby cultural centres (Vienna, Kassa — Kosice, Újvidék —Novi Sad, etc.). This process inevitably entailed a rationalisation of their artistic outlook which coincided in time with the extensive spread of Constructivism in Central Europe. That is why the contribution of the Hungarian artists assumed special significance. A peculiar paradox of the situation is that the Hungarian activist group which rallied around Lajos Kassák had its first constructivist achievements in the antimodernist Vienna and published Central Europe's highest-quality avantgárdé periodical MA (TODAY) in 1920-1925 under the circumstances of spiritual isolation and financial distress. Their activity and the Berlin-Weimar periods of our artists have become more widely known in the wake of recent exhibitions at home and abroad.

1 The great old town of Pécs in southern Hungary also became foreign territory when it was invaded by Serbian troops on 18 November 1918, and remained so until 22 August 1921, when Horthy's army reannexed it to Hungary. The uncertain situation was favourable for avantgárdé artists just starting out. According to recollections, the Hungarian "Mediterranean" town of Pécs was "an island of freedom" similar to the farther cultural centres.

2 The group which was organized around Farkas Molnár, that is, the cubo-expressionist members of the Pécs Art Circle, represented modern, international trends that ran counter to the intentional cultural nationalism then prevalent in Hungary. They declared the power of joint, progressive and international "action" in keeping with activism. Their ambition to form a community similar to the unfolding Bauhaus movement is comparable to the medieval guilds. During their experimentation with form, they had also drawn on the ism of the avantgárdé. These were the subject of their debates shaping their emerging spiritual and aesthetic values. An illuminating example of their intellectual search is their confrontation with the achievements of cubism from ten years before. They only had second-hand knowledge. Farkas Molnár, studying in Budapest in 1917-1919, got access to the Apollinaire study published with a delay in MA.

3 They rejected with Kassák's polemizing spirit the intention of the cubists at "decomposition" as it was known to them from an article by Jacques Rivière about the "mistakes of the cubists" published in the May 1917 issue of MA.

4 They regarded Picasso's and Leger's synthetic cubism as extremist, and, starting from the naturalist-centric approach prevalent in Hungary, they did not immediately give up their respect for visually grasped facts. What Malevich had realized back in the teens, that there was an irreconcilable antagonism between the dynamism of cubo-futurism and the persisting illusion of semi-feudal reality in Russia, also applied to Central Europe after 1920. Therefore, from the moment of their belated start, the avantgárdé trends were marked by an attitude of moderation and the avoidance of extremes. Already in the 1910s these qualities had been typical of the Budapest activists, whose liaison to Pécs was the Serbian Peter Dobrovic.

5 Apparently, the activity of Sándor Galimberti and his wife Valéria Dénes in Pécs in 1914/15, assimilating the direct influence of French Cubism, was rejected by the Molnár group as planar decoration.

6 The attempt at synthesizing the naturalistic elements with Cezanne's autonomous construction can be discerned in the works of the Pécs artists created in 1920/21 and in the articles published in the short-lived periodical Krónika of Pécs.

7 The oldest painter of the Pécs Artists' Circle was Hugó Johan (1890-1952). In his sensitive finely toned townscapes, the town with the