Nagy Ildikó szerk.: Nagybánya művészete, Kiállítás a nagybányai művésztelep alapításának 100. évfordulója alkalmából (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 1996/1)

Almási Tibor: Epizódok a román akadémiák növendékeinek nagybányai továbbképzése történetéből

Episodes from the Continuing Education of Students at the Romanian Academies in Nagybánya TIBOR ALMÁSI In 1919 a new chapter began in the history of the artists colony and school at Nagybánya. Following the peace treaty which had put an end to World War One, Transylvania - and therefore Nagybánya - became a part of the Romanian Kingdom. The leaders of the art school, which had long-standing traditions and fame reaching far beyond the borders of the country, were forced to make urgent and resolute decisions in the new historical situation in order to save the authority and independence of the institute and thus enable its survival, while simultaneously arranging its integration into the structure of Romanian cultural institutions. This latter goal was equally important to the Ministry of Religion and Public Education, since in the crisis following the war the firm organizational basis of the Nagybánya school provided the best conditions for the structural reformation of Romanian fine arts. Until 1926, when the School of Fine Arts was opened in Kolozsvár, there was not a single school for the training of artists or art teachers in Transylvania. There were two art academies in other regions of the country - one in the capital, Bucharest, and one in Ia§i - but their classical educational principles, which were based on nineteenth-century ideals, did not meet the new standards of the modern age. The deficiencies and anachronisms of the Romanian art scene, which were severely criticised by the painters Aurel Popp and Nicolae Tonicza, prompted Octavian Goga, a painter and the Minister of Culture, to take the first steps in the development of art education, utilising, among other things, the possibilities offered by the Nagybánya art school. Following Goga's verbal instructions, Aurel Popp, a painter from Szatmárnémedi, had talks with János Thorma, the director of the school, as well as with several town officials, in order to ascertain their reaction to the Ministry's plan to send students from Romanian academies to spend their summer term in Nagybánya. After they had come to an agreement, Aurel Popp summed up the teachers' conditions in a memorandum addressed to Octavian Goga. The urgency of the matter is well illustrated by the fact that the Ministry sent the first 30 students from the Bucharest academy to Nagybánya already in the summer of 1919, even before Goga had received Aurel Popp's written suggestions. Over the following years they were joined by students from Ia§i, and Kishinov. On average, 30 to 50 Romanian students spent two months at Nagybánya each summer. The director of the school, János Thorma, was responsible for their curriculum. After he retired, this task was taken over by two new, young teachers, András Mikola and János Krizsán. Apart from the problems and some unpleasant incidents caused by the yearly decreasing scholarships provided by the state, the visits of the Romanian art students, their activities, and their relationship with the other students satisfied everyone and were managed peacefully, without any particular conflicts. Many of the Romanian art students who completed their summer courses in Nagybánya went on to become famous Romanian artists, among them Alexandru Ciucurencu, whose works produced during the peak of his career show the experiences he gained and the impressions he received while in Nagybánya; Aurel Ciupe, who often depicted reminiscences of the town; Petre Abrudan, who later lived by the banks of the River Zazar; Eugen Pascu, who greatly influenced the avant-garde artists of the third generation at Nagybánya; and even one of the greatest sculptors of the Romanian nation, Romul Ladea. After the mid-twenties, the poet Emil Isac, appointed cultural supervisor of Transylvania, was responsible for the management of the Romanian students' stay at Nagybánya. From this time on, he and János Thorma, the director of the school, often exchanged letters. Thorma regularly wrote reports concerning the training and development of the Romanian students, as well as on every small detail of their daily lives. The great economic depression of the late twenties severely effected Romania. As a result of the crisis, the Romanian students no longer spent their summers in Nagybánya. Trying to assess the conclusions of the decade-long relationship between the Nagybánya art school and the Romanian students, it may be concluded that although these students were trained in Bucharest, Ia§i, and the summers they spent in Nagybánya contributed to their awareness of the importance of the relationship between the artist and nature. Beyond the artistic advantages, there was another important social and political effect of the Romanian students' stay at Nagybánya: namely the fact that, as István Réti put it, "Hungarians and Romanians lived and worked together at the art school in perfect harmony."