Veszprémi Nóra - Jávor Anna - Advisory - Szücs György szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 2005-2007. 25/10 (MNG Budapest 2008)

LÓRÁND BERECZKY: The First Fifty Years - 50™ ANNIVERSARY OF THE HUNGARIAN NATIONAL GALLERY - Krisztina PASSUTH: Back Home Again: The Paris-Budapest Odyssey of the Tihanyi Estate

8. Lajos Tihanyi: Portrait of Ivan Göll, 1924. HNG Ady, Mihály Károlyi (111. 6), Tibor Szamuely, Madame Eckstroem, the wife of a Swedish collector; Diego Rivera, Vincent Huidobro, Ivan Göll (111. 8), Johannes B. Becher, George Antheil, Karin Michaelis, Miguel Unamuno and several others. His paintings are better known, and I am not dealing with their models here. Many of the models of the photo and fdm material have still to be identified. What is quite clear from the correspondence, the notebooks and order sheets is that few European artists maintained such a wide-ranging network of relationships as did Lajos Tihanyi. And if we also take into consideration the fact that the deaf and dumb Hungarian painter had to learn also some French, German and English, we have to acknowledge that he must have had extraordinary talents and a superior willpower to be able to establish and uphold all these connections - mostly through correspondence. For all his attempts, he could not overcome his solitude and loneliness. Perhaps he needed no real, permanent companion, for, in view of the writings and accounts of his personality that have come down to us, he seems to have been fundamentally egocentric. The letters do not reveal whether he was capable of truly and durably loving anybody. The most important part of Tihanyi's posthumous papers is made up of his confessions, notes, fragments, and sections of letters of a like nature. In this respect, the letter he wrote to his French monographer Robert Desnos probably in 1936, i.e. in or before the year of the publication of the book, seems to be particularly interesting.

29 Valéria Majoros did not publish this almost utterly illegible letter and the curriculum vitae included in it in her monograph (see Appendix). For us, posterity, the text is most fascinating, laden with information.

30 However, the person whom it had been addressed to did not use as much as half a sentence from it.

31 Perhaps Tihanyi, for a reason no one knows, never copied his draft letter and sent it to Desnos. This will only be known if someone manages to trace it among the remains of Robert Desnos. Even more surprising is the fact that the documents that have come home, or, to be more precise, their contexts, reveal how far Tihanyi was devoted to his left-wing ideals and memories even after having been estranged from Hungary, from Hungarian intellectual and political life. This is evidenced by not only the photo he made of Szamuely, but the emigrant journals, e.g. the three issues of the ÉK (Wedge), he owned. This might have been due to the fact the March 1923 issue of ÉK published his essay entitled "Cultural Revolution", the draft copy of which, with a portrait sketch drawn over it, is now in the possession of the Archive of the Gallery.

32 Similarly, Tihanyi's chattels included copies of the fifth issue of the Vienna magazine Akasztott Ember (The Hanged Man; January, 1923) and the Párisi Munkás (Parisian Worker; 1924, no. 6 and 1925, no. 1). Obviously due to their personal friendship, he also had a copy of Mihály Károlyi's 1931 Üzenet a magyar földműves szegénységnek (Message to Hungarian Peasant Poor), as well as a copy of László Rubin's novel entitled Egy ember, aki tőke és kamat (A Man Who Is Capital and Interest) published by Népszava (no date). The only reason for mentioning this is that at least by the evidence of the chest - these were the books and magazines he kept apart from those about him. This attitude of his is also attested by the draft of a letter he presumably sent to the board of the Abstraction-Création in 1935.

33 In this he defined new tasks and objects for the group. In his opinion, revolutionary artists and writers were to be sought out and asked to cooperate. Naturally, the designation "révolutionnaire" implied not only a political, but also an artistic position. The posthumous papers and chattels in the chest represent mere fragments of the ideas, life and connections of Tihanyi, and it is only a few characteristics of these that I have been able to point out. It seems increasingly clear that, for all the excellent publications on him, the Tihanyi question cannot yet be regarded closed, the many loose threads left untied still promise numerous discoveries, whether in the material in the possession of the Archive of the Gallery or elsewhere. April 29, 2007 NOTES 1 See Majoros, Valeria Vanília ed. Tihanyi Lajos írásai és dokumentumok. Budapest: Monument-Art, 2002, p. 7. 2 Molnár, Géza. "A hazatérés. A Tihanyi-hagyaték sorsa." In: Uj Művészet, 1994, no. 11, pp. 76-77. 3 Majoros, op. cit. (see Note 1) and idem. Tihanyi Lajos. A művész és művészete. Budapest: Monument-Art, 2004. 4 I owe particular thanks to György Szűcs for seeking out the papers in question. 5 Passuth, Krisztina. "La carrière de Lajos Tihanyi." In: Acta Históriáé Artium 20 (1974) pp. 125-149.