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

III. KATALÓGUS - 2. HAGYOMÁNYKERESÉS - - Könyvillusztráció

Arcadia KB: "Today they are preoccupied with man at peace, nature and craftsmanship in the sense of the old masters." 15 The conservative political establishment and cultural policy after the revolutions, the counterrevolution and the consolidation, as well as the emigration of artists and intellectuals on a mass scale caused an enormous break in the country's cultural life. The profound economic and social consequences of the lost war shocked the country; the painful absence of the disannexed areas overshadowed all areas of life. The distressing atmosphere was aggravated for artists who stayed at home by the fact that they had to resume creative work shut off from the major international centres. The charismatic leader of the graphic section of the Academy of Fine Arts was Viktor Olgyai; he launched graphic training in the early 20th century and restarted it in 1921, attracting not only graphic artists but painters as well. His pupils did not approach graphic art as a tool of analysis or a brand new form of expression, the herald of a new society, as the artists in exile regarded it. Quite to the contrary, they stressed the classical traditions, the grasping of permanent values. The mythological and Biblical scenes, portraits and group portraits rendered with a technique perfected by a study of Mannerist and Baroque masterpieces of graphic art in the Museum of Fine Arts were not the outcome of simple historicism, but continued the duality of the avant-garde of the 1910s which was manifest in the reconciliation of innovation and tradition. The etching Resting in the Open by Vilmos Aba-Novák displays adherence to the cubo-expressive tradition of the teens. Its novelty is the powerful exploitation of the light effects which is reminiscent of the dramatics of Rembrandt's prints held up by Master Olgyai to the "young copperplate etchers" as the example. Károly Patkó's Resting Bathers and Picking Fruit reflect the artist's typically plastic modeling. The rounded human figures reminiscent of antique statues are weightless as if imbued by light. Nándor Lajos Varga's Allegory. "Under the Joy Tree" is heir to the animated multi-figural mannerist masterpieces. The Arcadia theme has great traditions in the modern Hungarian art after the turn of the century. What was then the ecstatic expression of the longing for a happier future is often resigned reflection after the cataclysms. From the mid-twenties the young generation grouped around István Szőnyi turned towards the Hungarian landscape in graphic art and painting, showing the Hungarian countryside and the rural figures - the "peasant Arcadia" - instead of a timeless beauty. Aba-Novák's Procession and István Szőnyi's Bound to the Soil are modern, sincerely empathic revivals of the genre pictures of peasant life. István Szőnyi chose picturesque Zebegény along the Danube bend as his permanent residence and often captured its lovely panorama in his prints. AM: The most famous Arcadia in Poland is situated a several dozen kilometres away from Warsaw and it is an English-style park established in 1 778 by Helena Radziwiłł née Przeździecka, the wife of Michał Hieronim Radziwiłł, who was an advocate of the pro-Russian orientation and the signatory to the Polish partition treaty. The landscaping of the park relates to a Greek myth concerning the land of eternal happiness, inhabited by common people, namely shepherds. To their astonishment, there was death in the Arcadian land of happiness (Ft in Arkadia ego [Even in Arcadia I exist]), imparting an ultimate sense to their existence in Arcadia. Helena Radziwitt's private tragedy (a premature death of her three daughters), contributed to the shaping of the iconographical programme of Arcadia, in