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

the creation of communist art. In his writings aesthetic and sociological terminology is commingled. He wrote about "proletarian" and "bourgeois" art, while he drew a sharp line between his efforts and the naturalism required by social democratic art criticism. In his essay entitled Towards an Ideological Form (1923) he worked out a speculative theory in an attempt to link abstract, geometric forms with ideological contents. The compositional sketches for the Luddites imply these ideas as well as the consequences of his series Analysis. Uitz' monographer, Eva Bajkay has recognized that there is also some correlation between Uitz' abstract drawings and the compositional schemes which posterity constructed for the analysis of classical works of art.

2 Uitz and some others who deemed it imperative for art to participate in the class struggle broke with Kassák. Uitz envisioned the new "proletarian" art by reconciling intelligibility with the formal achievements of the avantgarde. He first applied the figures onto an abstract framework in ink, then transferred the figures expressing bitterness and the passion of the revolt with extreme gestures and mimic in a rich web of violently meandering lines of the deep zink etching that almost appeared embossed on the paper. His work reflects the fall of the revolution experienced as a disaster, which however did not cause resignation but a passionate ambition to continue. Form can be more or less distinct, simple or complex

3 Anna Manicka The situation of Poland and Hungary at the beginning of the 20th century was totally different. For Poland, this was the period of the Partitions. Hungary, an important part of Austria-Hungary, was a world power. In 1914, the World War I broke out. It brought about the fall of most of European monarchies and empires, and contributed to the emergence of many new countries, such as Poland or Czechoslovakia. In that period, history had a huge impact on philosophy, and the dynamic development of communication enabled the new ideas to spread very fast. Contrary to appearances, the development of science did not render either philosophy or art obsolete. The main object of the 20th-century philosophy was life in a modern society, in a brave new world, in which there was no place for God and where man was becoming more and more lonely and alienated. While philosophy, as a symbol of wisdom and love of truth, still tried to discover and explain the mechanisms of the development of the world, and to find the place of man in the new, technicalized reality, art, at least seemingly, abandoned its noble mission. The betrayal of art lied in departing from the principle of mimesis, which consisted in a more or less faithful imitation of nature. It is no accident that the first search for new means of expression in art coincided with the invention of photography, which by nature was a perfect representation of the real world. The process of deconstructing the perfect (that is, faithful) image of reality in art proceeded slowly and with difficulty, both in art itself and in its theory. The first to tackle this problem in Poland were the Formists and the Poznań-based Bunt group [Rebellion]. The Formists were persuaded that it was necessary to dissociate oneself from the past and to abandon the slavish imitation of nature. It was a risky endeavour, which was not fully understood by contemporary critics, not mentioning the totally unprepared audience. How can you "explain to the audience that e.g. a < distorted

> rhinoceros made of yellow and green triangles is more beautiful than an <undistorted> rhino, a natural and grey one"? Witkacy (Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, 1885-1939), one of the most famous Polish artists of the 20th century and one of the group's theoreticians, answers this question in a rather clear and thorough way: "every creation [...] can be seen as something whose sight gives us pleasure [...], which is beautiful to us for some purely worldly reasons (usefulness, purpose, fear [...]), or we can like it regardless of any of such reasons, in itself, without any worldly associations, because of its pure form as such. This last way of liking is called artistic liking."

4 Undoubtedly, this was the kind of liking which the Formists had in mind.