Bakos Katalin szerk.: Szivárvány Áruház és Nagyvilág, Káldor László (1905–1963) és Gábor Pál (1913–1992) (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2000/4)

"Parallel Lives:" László Káldor and Pál Gábor, two Hungarian graphic designers 1933-1963. Summary

periodical vividly show how the requirement to serve the planned economy and convey communist ideology deprived poster design of its most fundamental peculiarities, deteriorating it to the inferior level of propaganda down to the abolition of its press forum. Advertisment, however, that was intertwined with the history of the company Hungarian Advertising Company survived the severity of the planned economy. Adjusting to the circumstances, the old advertising experts set up a "plan constructing and implementing group", organized an advertising puppet ensemble, went in for promoting Peace Loan, for productivity propaganda, itinerant exhibitions in the countryside and underwent many staff reductions before they could gain a foothold again in 1956 by setting up the advertising research group. Magyar Reklám appeared again from 1958 to 1963, the competition and exhibition of Best Poster of the Year was staged annually, in addition to collective ads pushing groups of goods, the ads for individual products also appeared. Advertising was not yet taught separated at universities but in 1959 the Union of Trade and Catering Workers, Hungarian Advertisers and the Chamber of Commerce announced a special course. In 1960 László Káldor taught advertisment design at the course of the Ministry of the Interior. The planning of political and documentary exhibitions, agricultural and industrial fairs was the most complex task of graphic designers. The propaganda function decisive after the war and merged with mass information then gradually became paired with the advertising function which only rose to predominance in the sixties. Both Káldor and Gábor designed many an exhibition at home and abroad, but to reconstruct them however sketchily would burst the frames of this exhibition and catalogue. The outlook of the planned economy set peculiar constraints upon advertising. After the nationalization, the promotion of commodities gave way to the propaganda of insurance, lottery, and savings. These are the main themes Káldor worked on for the domestic market. More important than the advertising of single .goods which only began to appear in the latter half of the fifties although detergent ads were present throughout - was the promotion of product groups, seasonal wares and shops. Káldor got these commissions as part of the campaigns of Divatcsarnok [Fashion Store] and Szivárvány Department Store, Pál Gábor made some outstanding posters for old firms resuming production right after the war, and later worked for foreign trade in this line. The Budapest streets carried his cultural posters. Foreign trade adverts - meant by the political leadership for the shaping of the country's image abroad apart from their direct practical aims - had an important role from 1949. In the years of the direst shortage of paper, the posters and prospectuses were made at outstanding levels of printing. Trade was separated from production, concentrated in the hands of large foreign trade companies marketing, and advertising, the commodities of various factories. The firms ordered the promotion material from the export department of Hungarian Advertising Company. On account of its role in foreign trade, at the beginning, the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce had a decisive role in advertisments targeted at foreign audiences, it had the right to preliminarily supervise the works, but this prerogative was later abolished under decentralization.

19 The Chamber's sections interested in advertising were the department of propaganda and the exhibitions division. The Chamber issued the rudimentary stenciled periodical Külkereskedelmi Propaganda [Foreign Trade Promotion] parallel with Magyar Grafika and after its abolition, too. The bulletin carried regular news about Hungarian and foreign events related to promotion and quoted specialists from Hungary and abroad.

20 István Varga's book A reklám [The advert] published in 1960 summed up the situation of the late fifties. As against the dogmatism prevalent from 1950, he declared that advertising was necessary even in socialism. The book abounds in illustrations and international analogies. The economist of a wide horizon and thorough knowledge, however, tried to cram advertising into the Procrustes' bed of the planned economy, writhing between principles and reality. He identified as the goals of advertising objective information, refining of the tastes and the promotion of the production of the people's economy and planned distribution. Change came in small steps, with the first synthesis going beyond Varga's principles being only written ten years later. Dr Mrs Hoffmann's and János Buzási's book, A reklám birodalmából [In the realm of advertising] criticized Varga's argumentation in the spirit of the new economic mechanism in 1970. The authors defined the arousing of demand and the service of purely business interests as the aims of advertising. Just like István Varga, they also warned that exaggeration, false publicity and squandering entailing quick amortisation must be steered clear of, still differentiating between socialist and capitalist advertisment. It was a significant recognition, however, that advertisment as a "social phenomenon" had become an important constituent of everyday life, a synonym to modernism apart from its practical purpose. In the fifties, the trade firm or production company was not in direct contact with the designer, the commissioning of the task, the evaluation of the plan and execution being undertaken by Hungarian Advertising Company. The artists themselves had a share in distributing and evaluating the designed works. Both Káldor and Gábor were appointed jury members. The jury presidents were often changed. In 1952, the Ministry of Public Education set up a lectorate of graphic art within the State Advertising Co. (later Hungarian Advertising Company). Káldor presided over it in 1957. Pál Gábor had a similar function in the lectorate of graphic art as part of the Art Foundation. The Art Foundatin set up in 1952 had as one of its functions the jurying of the works. In 1953, there were 12 creative artistic communities in Hungary. The Art Foundation gradually incorporated most of them, assuming the tasks of organization and interest protection. Graphic designers preserved some autonomy. Their relative organizational and material independence was largely due to their outstanding representative, political and educative function that the policy-makers ascribed to the designers who made the large industrial fairs, foreign exhibitions and festive decoration. The intellectual independence, however, had to be fought in ardent disputes and struggles, in which Pál Gábor played a great role. He regularly voiced the pressing need for the adequate conditions of quality work, against hurried labour, for the respect for well-done work in the professional forums. His attitude and position are well exemplified by his participation in the dispute on the occasion of the Polish poster exhibition in 1950 in which he defended the inherent characteristics of poster design in the teeth of the arguments of a dogmatic cultural policy. In this debate the only artist to take his side was László Káldor.

21 Gábor's being the spokesman and great polemist must have been combined with an outstanding sense of diplomacy because he was continuously present on the board of the graphic department of the Association. This implied official recognition and professional prestige alike. That is how it was possible that when the turn came in the autumn of 1956, the minutes of the association conference "discaring the