Zágorec-Csuka Judit: Gábor Zoltán festőművész portréja (Lendva, 2002)
Részletek Gábor Zoltán prózai műveiből
Zoltán Gábor - Portrait of the Painter Zoltán Gábor was born on March 31, 1922 in Lendava, Slovenia. He now resides in Zagreb, where he has spent the greater part of his active life. His parents were ordinary, middle-class townsmen. His mother, Maria Penhoffer, was born in Sebeborci; his father, Vince Gábor, in Sveti Ivanci in Goričko. In 1920, after the First World War, the family moved to Lendava and lived on Kanizsai Street (today's Kranjčeva Street) in a rented house that was demolished after the Second World War. Zoltán is their only surviving child. His younger brother, Jožef, died as a six-month-old infant; his sister, Blanka, lived to be nineteen years old. Traces of their passing tinged Zoltán's entire life. It had been his first encounter with death and the loss of loved ones, occurrences that later took place repeatedly. He was a sickly child and in 1927 was sent for health care to his uncle in Budapest for the second time. During walks in the city park with relatives, his uncle took him to see Árpád Feszty's circular painting, "The Arrival of Hungarians on the Pannonian Plains." That decisive experience was to determine his life and career. At that time, in the innocence of childhood, he "decided" to become a painter, for he believed the armies, horses and historical heroes in the picture to be alive in reality. In the provincial school in Lendava, the teacher, Miroslav Kokolj took particular notice of him. At age 12 he copied the motif, "Jesus Christ Praying in the Garden of Gethsemanae." It was his first work of art. In 1939 and 1940 he attended Zagreb's High School of Applied Arts. Among his professors were Kamilo Tompa, Edo Kovačič and Ernest Tomažič. His schooling was interrupted after the first year by the Second World War, but 1941 found him enrolled in a high school for applied arts in Budapest. There he endured difficult but lively and excitingly full student years. Notwithstanding the stipend he received, he had to accept all kinds of jobs to make ends meet. Mostly, he designed posters. The big city atmosphere suited him, he was liked among both students and professors. Outstanding not only in subjects concerning the fine arts, Zoltán also outdid his Budapest colleagues in the written word. It was in high school, too, that he received the thorough knowledge of literature and Hungarian art history that frequently awarded and enriched him in later years. What was to become a characteristic trait also developed in the young student at that time: a subtlety and filigree-like precision when writing in the Hungarian language. Passing the entrance examinations successfully in 1945, he enrolled in Zagreb's Fine 157
