Bakos Katalin - Manicka Anna szerk.: Párbeszéd fekete-fehérben, Lengyel és magyar grafika 1918–1939 (MNG, Warszawa–Budapest, 2009)

III. KATALÓGUS - 1. VÁROS. TÖMEG. GÉP. A MODERNIZMUS ARCAI - - Expresszionizmusok: formisták és a poznani Bunt csoport Lengyelországban, aktivisták Magyarországon

Kassák's brother-in-law Béla Uitz was one of the most active artists around MA. His innate drawing skills were given a firm foundation of craftsmanship at the Academy of Fine Arts; his ink drawings, copperplate etchings receive their peculiar character from a conflict between explosive emotions, a hot temper on the one hand, and sure draftsmanship, taut structure and a renaissance balance of the composition, on the other. This duality of Uitz' works - respect for the classical and the courage to burst forms - had an extensive influence on the generation starting in the 1920s, when he was already living abroad. Sándor Bortnyik became a mature artist in the MA circle. It was he who realized most consistently the Kassakian program in his stylistic synthesis and revolutionary symbolism. His poster design for the {illrd) demonstrative MA exhibition (1918) is a characteristic example of his grotesque, primitivist works closest to German expressionism. It also aptly illustrates how the motifs worked out in drawing or the field of multiplied graphic passed into applied graphic genres - posters, title-pages, illustrations - and how the sharp lines between these genres became blurred. His Flag Bearers (1919) served as a pamphlet and small poster on the title-page of the June 1920 issue of MA, while it is also an autonomous work of graphic art. The rendering of forms drew from the cubist analysis of space, from the hymnie tone of expressionism and from the dynamism of futurism. In his Kassák portrait engraved in linoleum (1919) Bortnyik captured the features of the charismatic leader of Hungarian avant-garde with self-assured briskness. Witty and adequate as it is, it conveys the inner strength and critical acumen of the sitter, yet it also allows room for a play of the elementary tools of graphic art. Nearly all the progressive Hungarian intellectuals sympathized with the 1918-19 revolutions, and were involved in the cultural matters of the short-lived new administration. After the fall of the Republic of Soviets, many writers, poets, journalists, philosophers, artists were forced to go into exile. Kassák and his circle left for Vienna. The artists and critics of MA integrated the newly emerging trends, but parallel with that important expressionist works were still made, such as Bortnyik's linocut Blacksmiths (1922). MA also reproduced Aurél Bernáth's Peasants of 1922, from his Graphik Mappe executed in pochoir in Vienna. The young artist had not been in direct contact with MA back in Hungary; he only made friends with János Schadl from this circle in the war hospital at Keszthely. His graphic series is a shocking depiction of the depressing atmosphere of a backward country hit by the cataclysms. Backing up Central and Eastern European artists, Herwarth Waiden showed Bernáth's abovementioned portfolio among his other works in the Gallery of Der Sturm. Mattis Teutsch was also put on display, and some of his graphic works appeared in Walden's periodical, some even on the title-page. From among Hungarians, Waiden also presented works by Bortnyik, Gyula Hincz, Hugo Scheiber and Béla Kádár as they met the criteria of his expanded concept of expressionism. In Kádár's Loving Couple (1924) and Woman with a Cow (1924) the forms of earlier rebellious expressionism are tamed, the grotesque figures are fitted into a decorative composition and the acrid tastes are refined into lyricism. The zeal of the 1910s lived on in Tibor Gallé's two graphic series (1922 and 1 925) elaborating the stations in the maturation of an artist from his native village to the metropolis, and his experiences as a prisoner of war. Alone on the Road is a dreamlike vision of the typical row of houses in his native Harta. Among Large Walls (1922) and Lázár Street (1925) are grotesque images of the big city implying both glitter and suffering. Apart from the expressive treatment of form, motifs and the self-ironic overtones of Neue Sachlichkeit crop up here and there in Gallé's works. Béla Uitz' 14-sheet series Luddites (1923) combines in a unique manner two parallel but opposite tendencies of the period: expressionism and constructivism. The artist made his agitating zinc etchings busting with emotions on the basis of abstract compositional sketches. The theme of the prints is the revolt of the textile workers in early 19th-century England. The idea came from Ernő Bolyai Bettelheim, a communist journalist who played an active part in founding the Austrian Communist Party in 1919, and wrote the German preface to the album. The Hungarian artists in emigration held heated disputes about the role of art. Uitz took an extreme position, his aim being