Kovács László PUTU: KOVÁCSOLÁSUNKKAL ÜZENNI A JÖVŐBE. NYOMOT HAGYNI A VILÁGBAN (Kiállítási katalógusok - Szentendre, Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum, 2007)

PREFACE If I want to picture his very special personality, I have to talk like PuTu - the one jumping the queue of the blacksmiths standing in front of Hephaestus - I have to use PuTu's language, I have to quote him because I wouldn't be able to formulate his ars poetica, his own and unique artistic confession better than he does. "I am in love with the Iron: it is an impeccable, true, pure love". "I am an autodidact artist. I have been visiting my own schools. I regularly meet Hephaestus, we chat, we drink a glass of wine and we understand each other well. But I am on the best possible terms with Csege*, the ancient Hungarian blacksmith; I owe the most to him. Here and there I picked up my knowledge, I was learning the same way as we learn life or love or the relationship with our partner. 1 have learnt the Iron as well". "I am Putu, subject of Lord Iron, duke of Rust, not an everyday blacksmith." "I like experimenting! - but not to the extreme. If something does not make progress, I drop it. I take it up again, later. (...) Experimenting promotes art! This is my conviction." He tells following about the hard, sweaty, physical work (freely quoted from his different notes): "During my work I feel almost like floating, under a spell, in a euphoric state of mind and I am nearly playing jazz while hammering around." - "The water is running from my body, inside and outside I am hot as the iron, the heating is easy and I take out the iron from the fire at the right moment: I don't hesitate, I don't disturb it and still, I remove it just in time and then start beating it strenuously, while my tongue is never still, I am improvising: the iron is naked and cold, hard and frigid and turns soft and silky in the thongs of flame..." This attitude and position towards life encourages PuTu to direct harsh criticism at those false blacksmiths who "try to act like artists" and "horribly corrupt the trade" (to quote again his words), who "don't feel the need of and lack the feeling for fastidious, pure workmanship", who "just wallop the iron". As he words in his strictly concise, still poetic aphorisms, in his truthful remarks: "The Iron stands for the 24 hours of narration." Because "it is easy to chat in the language of Iron, it is however difficult, to speak." Yes. This is PuTu! Whose self-awareness of the trade is only exceeded by his poetic ardour. As he says, he "makes love to the iron" physically and spiritually, and he is capable to act as a real performer at the occasions of his individual exhibitions or as a regular guest of the annual Hephaestus festival in Helfstyn (Czech Republic) or during the live performances of the international Smiths' Reunions. If necessary, he wears tails, or he is almost naked covered with soot, if required in red-white-green, wearing a beret pulled down to his ears, or he appears with a derby, with a flyer cap or a crash helmet on his head and with a bow-tie made of iron on his white shirt or otherwise stripped to the waist. ... PuTu is for me a phenomenon like Imre Bukta. Besides the outer similarities - a thin braid on the side in the beard or in the hair, a beret always pulled down to the ears, etc, he is also a man from the village, and even if he began his carrier not exactly as agricultural artist (like Bukta) but he started as a blacksmith in the agriculture in Polgár and Tiszacsege in the cooperative Rákóczi. He learned his trade from simple people. In 1985-84 he set up his own workshop. So, after he left the Hungarian Open-Air Museum in Szentendre (1981-96), he has been working in his independent workshop. He was admitted to the National Association of Hungarian Creative Artists in 1997 but since 1977 he has been already exhibiting his works of art. He created grills for windows and for the protection of trees, trade-signs, banisters, small and big gates, ironwork of doors, door-handles, wall brackets, stove-doors and sets of firing tools. Masculine taciturnity and simplicity are the main characteristics of his works. "Picturesque show", "Baroque drivel", decorative, over-adorning pretentiousness, thus all what degrades the art of the blacksmith and reduces it to a mere plumber's activity or to the trade of a fitter are far from his works with their greyish-black patina. He highlights the organised and shaped "static force" of the iron, its load-bearing capacity, its tensile strength and "mass", the rough but squeezed out beauty resulting from the natural behaviour of the material, and the "monumentality" without complexity, and if we want, he underlines the avantgarde materiality of the artistic genre: he operates with shocking forms, experiments with found and ready objects showing an innovative inwardness. He likes to give titles with playfulness, using poetic polyvalence, humorous tongue-wagging and witty metaphors. We meet them all in the exhibition. Tihamér Novotny * A person invented by the artist with the purpose to create a "small god" for the Hungarian blacksmiths. 4