Page 20 - Studio International - March 1974

and forced to go underground while all official
backing was given to a distorted new ideal
of realism. Those who became leading artists
abroad and were lost to Hungary include
László Moholy-Nagy, Marcel Breuer, Vasarely,
György Kepes, Nicholas Schöffer and Zoltan
Kemeny.
The first generation whose voice was heard
towards the late fifties grouped around one
single leading personality, Béla Kondor, who
died young, in tragic circumstances, in 1973.
Kondor's new ideas were born within a culture
which at that time hermetically excluded any
information, not only of foreign developments
but of the Hungarian past as well. Kondor's
whole world therefore has only one source, the
artist himself; it was natural that this world
came to be a mythological one. However, it
contained many layers of reality : cosmic, social
and personal, physical and moral. A challenge
was issued to a whole age, a generation. But
only fragmented results were possible, which
were nevertheless ingenious fragments, or
perhaps tragic outcries. It is not accidental that
Kondor created his best in the field of graphic
art, which is an essentially illustrative medium.
He was a poet, perhaps intellectually related to
William Blake; and Kondor was imitable but
inaccessible.
Another group became influential in Hungary
at more or less the same time. It is not age that
distinguishes its members from Kondor and his
followers, but the perspectives involved in
their problematics. Theirs was the 'generation'
of the so called 'Magian Realists'. Their starting-
point is Aura Bernath, a professor at the
Academy, an artist and an influential teacher
revolutionary forces. The avant-garde group Bela Kondor Bomba 1966 during the dull era of social realism. He had
which sympathized with the political left, was 29x 27 cm been a prominent member of the post-
forced to emigrate. Vienna became one of the impressionist group of the 1920s and saved some
important emigré centres. There Kassák the Group of Socialist Artists which co- of the professional values of this otherwise
organized the Ma-group who produced the ordinated socially committed architects, ambivalent and in its time not at all progressive
important artistic ideas of constructivist painters and sculptors. They tried to experiment group : exactitude, a knowledge of drawing and
Bildarchitektur. Other emigré artists worked in on a wide scale, with an exact sociological colouring. Bernath's students used this
the Bauhaus, in Berlin and Moscow. During the gauging of facts on the one hand and the knowledge to develop a kind of extreme
second half of the 192os the Hungarian régime romanticism of the 'proletarian theme' on the realism — unlike the one contained in social
became increasingly more fascist-revanchist other. Besides this experiment Lajos Vajda's realism — which at the time expressed rather
which resulted in official backing for racist, and Dezsö Korniss's so-called Szentendre surrealistic and irrational intuitions. One can
nationalistic approaches while some other Movement attempted to discover an confidently describe this as a 'school', and
schools were tolerated, such as those of the interrelated language, which would synchronize there is no doubt that the leading light was
harmless bourgeois idealists and the late but early Hungarian constructivism with the Tibor Csernus, now living in Paris. The line
first-rate impressionistic post-impressionists. propaganda-art of the Russian avant garde of disciples begun with László Lakner, László
There were a few worthy but short-lived and the montage techniques of Eisenstein. Gyémánt, Akos Szabó; later others were
endeavours by repatriated emigrés, or Szentendre artists were aiming to use a new joined to it. Even if this realism had the scope
communist theoreticians and writers, who tried `fountain head', they turned to folk art and to open new spheres, it also certainly contained
to follow Soviet examples. Kassák experimented clarified its visual language, hoping to at least one serious limitation: the aesthetism
with constructivist artistic creativity and incorporate it in a convention of intellectual- which was inherited from the Hungarian post-
philosophy, Bortnyik with Bauhaus-type artistic language for Central/East-Europe. impressionists.
design, Derkovits, Kassák, Hevesy, Kepes, (But they did not work with the decorative Young Hungarian artists emerged in large
Korniss, Aladár Minas and others with ornamentation most people take as folk art.) numbers around 196o, all eager to link their
agit-prop photo-collages, caricatures and the Their inspiration sprang from the music of ideals to the never fully developed and therefore
mass-theatre. The economic world crisis, Bartók. But political persecution, death in as yet unsolved problems of the Hungarian
however, soon brought about a new wave of forced labour camps (Vajda, etc.) and the war past, and also to contemporary international
emigration. After the resultant loss of talents put an end to the full implementation of these ideas. These artists belong to the 'third
two last experiments begun during the ios ideas. At the end of the war, in 1945, fragments generation'. One can say that their ideals are
were doomed from the start because of the of the original experiment provided a base for a just as heterogeneous — although basically not
historical circumstances. One was initiated by new start, but in 1949 this group was silenced dissimilar — as the media they work in. While
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