Veszprémi Nóra - Szücs György szerk.: Vaszary János (1867–1939) gyűjteményes kiállítása (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2007/3)

Válogatott bibliográfia

Summary In order to describe the career of János Vaszary (1867-1939), scholarship cannot rely on any extensive correspondence material, as in the case of József Rippl-Rónai, or on any regularly kept diaries, like those fortuitously preserved in the estate of László Mednyánszky. In attempting to understand the way of thinking of an artist who was always reserved, secretive about his personal emotions, touching on only matters of art in his writings, the sources relating to his broader family environment, the making of his works and to his pedagogical ideas have a particular import. In his essay called Ideas on the Use and Abuse of Sources, Attila Rum makes a source-critical study of the fragmentary memoirs of Mrs János Vaszary; and calls for its precautious use due the many inconsequentialities he has revealed in the text. The type-written manuscript by Mrs Vaszary headed Notes in the Life of Artist János Vaszary consists of two parts; the first one was an outline of the artist's family ancestry, his childhood and his life around the turn of the century, which was composed after his death; the second part, which Mrs Vaszary had committed to paper in 1936 writing "from the present", describes her meeting Vaszary and living with him from the viewpoint of the Rosenbach family. Gizella Szatmári's publication of sources entitled Selection from the Letters of János Vaszary often provides new information on the making of works, and helps correct several biographical details. Among his correspondents, Vaszary had some of the seminal figures of the first half of the twentieth century, such as the art historians Károly Lyka, Béla Lázár, Ödön Gero and Máriusz Rabinovszky, the editor Aurél Kárpáti, and Minister of Culture Kunó Klebelsberg. Vaszary wrote most of his letters to his fiancée, Mária Rosenbach, in 1905, giving personal accounts of his Italian, Spanish, French itinerary, of the sights he had visited. In his essay, The Beauty of the Countryside Begins to be Derailed from the Magic Circle of the Word, introducing Vaszary's War Diaries, György Szűcs attempts to interpret the events referred to in the artist's fragmentarily preserved diaries, often hastily, almost illegibly written due the adversities of war, with help of the published diaries of other war correspondents (Ferenc Molnár, Emil Szomory) and the identification of geographical places. The section entitled Vaszary's War Diaries consists of four parts: the first three are notes on the fronts in Galicia and the Carpathians held in the Archives of the Hungarian National Gallery, and the second is a travelogue of sorts on the Balkans front based on a newspaper publication. In the section entitled Recollections by the Students of Vaszary, on the one hand, his students (chronologically, Zoltán Klie, Tamás Lossonczy, Dezső Pécsi-Pilch, Gyula Hincz, Gyula László, Jenő Barcsay, Barna Búza, Emil Krocsák, Piroska Laczkovits, Lajos Ágh-Ajkelin, Klára Csada, Piroska Szántó, and Gyula Lőrincz) recall their memories, from which his free-school corrections, the tasks he gave to lead students to grasp modern painterly approaches and his personal relationships with his students can be reconstructed. A number of his students later came to teach at the Academy of Fine Arts (Jenő Barcsay, Gyula Hincz, Emil Krocsák), and made use of their master's teaching. Belonging to Vaszary's company, the collector István Révész (1887-1973) may have played a role similar to József Rippl-Rónai's brother Ödön RipplRónai. He collected not only paintings by Vaszary, but also documents related to him. What is more, he promoted the work of the artist at various fora. In his short memoir entitled The Story of My Vaszary Collection, he recalls the story of his friendship with the master, and his tasks in safeguarding and administering his estate after his death. It is owing to him that the Hungarian National Gallery acquired a number of outstanding works by Vaszary, many of which are on display at this exhibition.