ÉVA B A J K A Y
Collecting Avant-Garde - A Subjective History
In the second half of the 1960s, in the period of the so-styled New Economic Mechanism, new cultural opportunities opened up. With the Iron Curtain sometimes cautiously lifting, certain intel lectuals and artists managed to travel abroad, and thus embark on their long-awaited encounters with modernism. Looking back from today, it would be difficult to call this a beautiful period, es pecially to describe it as a "golden age," and those of us who began our careers in its midst little understood the changes taking place. The fourteen art-history students who graduated every two years found it difficult to get a job, but they took the museological practice in the last semester of their university education very seriously. I myself had occasion to absolve this duty at the De partment of Painting of the National Gallery under Éva Bodnár, and I wanted to do research on the Age of Reform (1825^48) artists who had worked abroad. Not sufficiently well-connected, I could only hope for a job if I did my utmost best. From the au tumn of 1967,1 started working at the National Gallery on a thousand-forint stipend from the Fine Arts Fund, which was then the all-inclusive arts body in charge of finances, as well, and hoped to be tenured eventually. Also, I had a part-time job thanks to the Art History Documentation Centre headed by Lajos Németh, ensuring an entry in my Worker's Licence,* and made card indices at the National Széchényi Library in the evenings. I was as inexperienced as any career starter, and was taken by surprise when, on October 1, 1968, director general Gábor Ö. Pogány required me to go to the Keleti (Eastern) Railway Station at ten o'clock at night and welcome Béla Uitz arriving on the train from Moscow, and also to be his escort, as I spoke both Russian and German. My task was to engage the master and not let him "disturb" the preparations for his retrospective exhibition on the ground floor of the National Gallery (then still in the building of the former High Court). I could hardly fathom what my task re ally was, but that it would not be easy I gathered from Pogány 's last remark that i f I could not manage, he would have a lad sent instead of me. At the university, we hardly learned anything about the former avant-garde, constructivist, left-wing artist, Béla Uitz (18871972), who had been living in Moscow since 1926. The only work by him the permanent exhibition of the National Gallery displayed was the 1916 Fruit Harvesters from his Kecskemét period. I had known his colleague József Nemes Lampérth much better by ex perience, Anna Zádor having held her university lectures on him at his exhibition in 1963. We were getting increasingly aware of the Activists (a Hungarian avant-garde group), I was even allowed 1
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1. Béla Uitz and Éva Bajkay in Pécs, 1968. Photograph in possession of the author
to write my seminar paper on one of László Moholy-Nagy's Bauhaus books (Malerei, Fotografie, Film. Munich, 1925; in Hungarian, it came out as late as 1978). In 1961, Dénes Pataky arranged the prints and drawings show of The Eights and Activists in the HNG, which was followed by The Eights and the Circle of the Activists Krisztina Passuth curated at the St. Stephen Museum in Székesfehérvár. Uitz's most often reproduced pictures, one or two etchings from his General Ludd series, had alarmed me. (111. 5) I was trembling as I went to welcome the artist. The VIP lounge was teeming with people. Short welcome speeches were made by ministry, party and art society officials, who then disappeared, and I was left to accompany the artist to his hotel. He had become bald in his year and half in one of Stalin's prisons, and was limp as his legs had been frostbitten while he was creating his fresco paintings in Moscow in the 1940s and 1950s. The next day being weekend, we could in no way visit the National Gallery. So I asked him whose work he would be inter ested in seeing. Thus apart from Pál Pátzay, whose statue of Lenin was on our way in Dózsa György út, next to Felvonulási tér (Rally Square), he mentioned Zoltán Olcsai Kiss, his Paris acquaintance. Looking for his works - and perhaps also led by some intuition, too - we found ourselves in the cemetery in Kerepesi út. He was overcome by the spectacle there, and I felt this was where he wanted to return finally. Perhaps this was when he decided that he would repatriate. 4
Uitz left the country in the winter of 1919. After some quite prolific years in Vienna (1920-24), Moscow (1921) and Paris (1924-26), he applied for a residence permit in France, but, not getting it, he accepted the offer to teach at the Moscow Vhutemas, a sort of Bauhaus art school. After the gruesome decades and the Second World War, it would have been self-evident for him to re turn to Hungary dominated by the Soviet Army. Cultural minister Gyula Ortutay even invited him back. In 1947, on his sixtieth an niversary, several appreciative articles appeared in the press by among others Gábor Ö. Pogány. In his famous book, The Revo lutionaries of Hungarian Painting, published at the time, he still defended the moderns from the recurrent charges of thematic re working, and somewhat over-appreciated the suggestive new cre ation of Uitz, demonstrating its influence on Gyula Derkovits and István Szőnyi. In accordance with the community art programme announced and the culture-political directives in effect in Hun gary at the time, he stated that Uitz had been able to unfold his in novative intentions under the conditions the Soviet Union provided - in this he was quite off the mark. Why had Uitz not returned to Hungary, neither in 1948 nor in 1958? It is difficult to tell exactly, but he must have had good pre monitions and informers. He had been charged with formalism in the Soviet Union in 1936, and he had every reason to fear coming home under Hungarian Stalinism. Personally, he must have wanted to return, because he did make a visit in 1958. Pogány was the director general of the National Gallery by then, and he took him round his just-completed permanent 19 -century exhibition. By witness of the photos, they were hatching plans and vibrantly arguing over them. (111. 2) In that year, the National Gallery housed major retrospectives of both the 19 -century academic painter Gyula Benczúr and the surrealist Imre Amos (this occa sioned the acquisition of much of his estate by the gallery). The director general promoted a "revolutionary art" through a grand exhibition at the Arts Hall in the midst of the cultural conditions of a restored Stalinism. This was meant as a kind of trial per formance for the permanent 20 -century show of the National Gallery, and it was presented in Moscow in 1958. The conception focussed on labourer representation deemed as a revolutionary subject matter. The selection to be displayed was expanded to include works of a higher aesthetic quality, such as those by Hun garian-Plains painters, The Eights, Gyula Derkovits and József Egry, as well as numerous other talented artists." Pogány took a position of cautious modernism, implying that artists could even be abstract painters privately or in their studios, but were not to dabble in such retrograde formalist work officially. However, this was not a period to be dominated by Uitz or his likes, but by Sándor Ék, who returned to Hungary as an officer of the Red Army, and of whom Pogány published a monograph, and who was and remained a pathetic imitator of Uitz. From 1949, he laid his hands on the Department of Graphic Arts at the Acad emy of Fine Arts. He bequeathed his agitprop posters to the Na tional Gallery, which formed the core of its poster collection. Step by step, cultural policy began to change from 1965. The debate on the modern and the relationship between Hungarian and international art had already taken place in the literary magazine Új írás (New Writing), though at the same the art magazine Pogány edited, Művészet (Art), harshly attacked so-called deca dence, and Pál Pátzay, an early colleague of Uitz, warned artists against the incest of isms. In 1965, Pogány still defended so5
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2. Béla Uitz and Gábor Ö. Pogány at the National Gallery, 1958 Photo: HNG Archive, inv. no.: 9810/1958
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cialist realism in the Társadalmi Szemle}* though earlier on he had maintained his connection with the leader of the Activists, Lajos Kassák, for whose Paris catalogue he had written an in troduction, which was said to have cost him the most prestigious state honours, the Kossuth Prize. Through the offices of Vasarely, Kassák had by this time already had several exhibitions in Paris, at the Galerie Denise René, and actively participated in efforts to promote his work in Western Europe. And at home, János Fajó curated his master's first exhibition. News may have reached Moscow through Uitz's wife (Kassák's sister) and others. In an attempt to replace the Munkácsy cult with that of a more modern painter, the National Gallery arranged a Derkovits retro spective in 1965, founded on acquisitions that had taken place ear lier. From the outset, the director general sought to acquire, apart from works by Derkovits, Uitzes, too. Thus a way was opened for broader researches on the so-called "revolutionary tradition" that would point beyond mere dogmatism; it seemed a cautious route could be taken for an attitude open towards modernism. Informa tion gathered from foreign reference books and catalogues, spo radic travels urged a group of young artists to join up with the international. For them, the rejection of figurai painting grew out of the soil of dictatorship, as a kind of reaction against the blockade of abstract art by state policy and public taste. This is a Central European phenomenon. Like the Poles, we Hungarians were lucky to have been able to rely on the constructivist innova tions of the 1920s. The social and artistic U t o p i a of classical left ist avant-garde gradually became accepted under socialism, as aspirations basing themselves on this could be justified ideologi19
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grounds of "formalism" or the trumped-up charges of espionage against émigrés who returned home. So come he could, but his arrival was laden with tense expectations, and he himself had no clear view of art life any longer. It is a noteworthy fact that Uitz's emigration material in So viet collections and the possession of the artist was exhibited at the National Gallery at the same time as the New Avant-Garde made its first collective debut in the building of architectural office Iparterv at the end of 1968. In his own way, the director general of the National Gallery was open, too; especially with regard to Hungarians living in neighbouring countries: on the influence of Deputy Director István Solymár, the Transylvanian artist Béla Gy. Szabó had a one-man show and bequeathed a large number of his works to the Gallery; while material was selected from the estate of Bertalan Pór in Slovak possession for his major retrospective, and the huge body of his artworks were deposited for safeguarding in the Gallery. ' This was also a result of the fact that foreign relations were construed at the time to primarily focus on the socialist coun tries, especially the Soviet Union. Hungarian exhibitions were arranged in Moscow almost annually, thus organizing Uitz's show would entail no particular difficulty. His works made in V i enna and Paris had to be brought home not from the West, but from the Soviet Union, as he had taken them with himself through all the stations of his emigration. Westerners began to develop an interest in East European avant-garde at this time. And in Hun gary, too, it was the forgotten Hungarian avant-gardiste whose homecoming was eagerly expected, especially by the younger generation. In 1967, Corvina Publishers brought out a representative Uitz Album, hallmarked by Ferenc Münnich, notably prime-minister since 1957, who wrote the introduction. To prepare the volume, Anna Oelmacher, head of the Department of Prints and Drawings of the National Gallery, and later the art historian Éva Korner and a photographer had visited the old master in his Moscow studio, and tried to select the material for the book. Pogány then went to art historian Sándor Kontha, who had written a monograph on the sculptor László Mészáros, Uitz's colleague in Kyrgyzstan and a 24
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3. Béla Uitz: Geometrical study for "Kapitän von Nottingham, " 1923. HNG
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4. Béla Uitz: Sketch for "Kapitän von Nottingham, " 1923. HNG
cally. Thus official cultural policy slowly began to be open to acknowledging modernism, which had been rejected until the end of the 1950s; the precedents for this were provided by agitprop art and posters of the period between 1917 and 1919. The publication of Imre Bori's and Eva Körner's Kassák iro dalma és festészete (The Literature and Painting of Kassák) in 1967 had the effect of a revelation. In 1968, the death of Kassák a year earlier occasioned new exhibitions in Székesfehérvár: the Lajos Kassák Memorial Exhibition and the Hommage á Kassák were arranged with the participation of constructivist-minded young artists, such as Imre Bak, Tamás Hencze, János Fajó and as sociates from Hungary and Lucien Hervé, Jifi Koláf, Rosie Rey from elsewhere. At the same time, the yet unknown post-1919 oeuvre of Béla Uitz seemed multiply topical. The Western rediscovery of Kassák may have also contributed to this, for his brother-in-law, Uitz, had had an important role in the modernist aspirations of the 191 Os and 1920s. It may have dawned on Uitz that, in the period of the "soft dictatorship", he no longer had to fear being excluded on 23
5. "Kapitän von Nottingham. " Sheet from Uitz's series of etchings GeneralLudd,
1923. HNG
martyr of Stalinism, and was thus regarded an expert on Soviet matters, and asked him to curate the 1968 exhibition. Attested by his letters, one of the last wishes of Uitz was to put up an exhibition in Budapest and one in Moscow. However, he complained to cultural minister Pál Ilku saying: "The activity with which comrades Pogány and Kontha are working is very good! But there is little contact with them." He was worried that they would "arrange a detail show" without the monumental works. To counter this, he made photos of his General Ludd series, blew them up to 1,5x2,5 metres, mounted them on wooden boards, and demanded their display. Crushed in the grips of history and Stal inist cultural policy, the 81-year-old master not only inclined to dogmatism, but became a die-hard dogmatic, and was very diffi cult to get along with. In the complicated situation, my task was far from easy, having to organize meetings and trips to the coun try. This was how we got to Pécs, where, supported by the master of Hungarian cultural policy, György Aczél, a skilful acquisition of material for the Modern Hungarian Gallery under Éva Hárs had been going on for a decade. What the National Gallery could not specialize on, Pécs was permitted to do and was well-funded, too. We also visited Hódmezővásárhely, where, in the midst of the tra ditional peasant world of the Hungarian Plains, a value-preserv ing, characteristically modern art with new stylistic means was produced; and we went to the city of the biennials of graphic art, Miskolc, too. Accompanied by a catalogue, the Béla Uitz retrospective was opened in the ground-floor rooms of the National Gallery on Oc tober 24, 1968. (111. 7) It was a major success - and deservedly that, from many respects, too. The excellent press coverage was beyond all expectations. The almost and fully abstract works the master produced in Vienna, his genuinely powerful and yet unknown masterpieces made during his first Moscow trip under the influences of Russian avant-garde and icon painting and church architecture had an eye-opener effect on especially us, youths. Meant as the focal point, the etching series General Ludd (Vienna, 1923) and the blown-up photos actually explained in a didactic manner the way he used his experiments in abstract form, his return from constructivism to figuration and agitprop 31
7. Cover of the catalogue of the 1968 Uitz exhibition at the HNG
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6. Béla Uitz: Analysis, 1921-22. HNG
subject matter. Drawn after his abstract, linearist series called Analyses (Vienna, 1921-22), his abstract compositions in colour pencil had certainly served as compositional schemes for depict ing the story of the English machine breakers. (Ills. 3-5) As pre liminary studies, the drawings in purple ink had contributed to this, and then followed the powerfully expressive sketches and the final zinc-plate etching that revolutionized Hungarian graph ics (see István Dési Huber: 4 Order 1928; Gyula Derkovits: Dózsa Series, 1929; Ernő Berda: No pasaran, 1939; Ferenc Redő: Antal Budai Nagy, 1939; Miklós Barna: From the History of the Hungarian Revolutionary Working-Class Movement; Károly Háy: For One Homeland Between Two Pagans, 1941^42). The period around 1960 saw the flowering of graph ics freeing themselves from the constraints of socialist realism. Already in 1956, the diploma work of Béla Kondor had drawn on the graphic tradition begun by General Ludd, but, while Uitz had turned back from creating new form to historical, ideologi cal "Tendenzkunst", Kondor went exactly in the opposite direc tion with his Dózsa series. Uitz's graphic works meant a genuine rediscovery, while his earlier monumental ism dovetailed with the period demand for murals embodying the ideal of a collectivist, community art. A l l this surprised the public; the leaders of cul tural life praised the exhibition; journalists and art-critics wrote enthusiastically in both the daily press and professional maga zines; and visitors made their pilgrimage to the National Gallery until the end of the year. Thus the beginner artists of the new avant-garde could meet a master of the classical avant-garde and a part of his works in Bu dapest. I was particularly sorry that the works made in the 191 Os in Hungary were not exhibited together with the ones brought th
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Getting to know constructivism seemed more topical at the time. After proscription under several political regimes, the school now became increasingly approachable, its leftist trend was regarded more and more important, its past connected to the 1919 dictatorship of the proletariat turned into an emphasized tra dition in Hungary. The visitors of the National Gallery could now try the sweet taste of a fruit that had been forbidden: everyone could find the work valid in his or her eyes. Also, the reappraisal of expressionism had been off the agenda by then. In the 1920s, Uitz had represented a particular, au tonomous constructivist aspiration blending with it, pointing in different directions and authenticated by his direct participation in the classical, international avant-garde. In the fifty years that had passed in the meantime, his mediation between the avantgardistes of the West and the East had been successfully sunk into oblivion. It is still little known that that he was the first to publish Malevich's Suprematist Manifesto in Vienna, using home-made clichés to print the illustrations, the Constructivist Manifesto of Rodchenko and Stcpanova, as well as the Realistic Manifesto of Pevsner and Gabo. Nor did Uitz himself bring this up, it all turned out from the records, papers and photos of the period (though he did hold on to many of these). It was upon seeing old reproductions of his oils made in Vienna that I started to inquire about them. 41
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8. Béla Uitz: Struggle, 1922. HNG
After the exhibition, the Hungarian state bought a part of the exhibits for the National Gallery, and the artist himself bequeathed another four hundred to it. Then Uitz returned to Moscow, and decided to come back to Hungary for good at the end of 1969. The next task was to wind up all his material in his studio. The artist lived in what used be a classroom: an iron bed, a chair, a stool, an easel were his belongings - the shocking accessories of destitution; plus heaps of paper in total chaos. I was asked to put this in order, for the master had appreciated my archivist endeav43
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home now. The full oeuvre would have been far more effective! And the collection of prints and drawings of the National Gallery had a fine body of 150 early works through its continued acquisi tion efforts. Ever since the success of his first one-man show in 1914 (the collector Marcell Nemes bought up almost all Uitz's material), selections of drawings and some oils have kept finding their way into our museums. It was only the two great fresco de signs, Fishers and Builders, as well as a later version of Hu mankind that were put on display at the 1968 exhibition. These were found in Uitz's Moscow studio, and fit in quite well with of ficial monumentalism. The material to attract greatest attention was his work done in Vienna. It should be remembered that it needed quite some daring at the time to exhibit Abstract compo sitions. And these were eked out by the 19 pieces from the 37 of the Analysis series, which are a particular Hungarian development of Russian constructivism. 36
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And this did not mean all! In his 1926 and 1932 studies, János Mácza mentions some large-scale oils, often dubbed Icon Analy ses?* At the National Gallery show, two of his small-scale sketches called The Analysis of a Russian Icon were on show from the Pushkin Museum. The fact was that before transporting his works to Hungary, the Pushkin Museum had bought some of his works, and thus was the permission to bring the rest given. This was how a selection made by someone who had an eye for it got into the famous collection of the international arts museum in Moscow. The icon analyses were not geometric studies of actual icons, but abstract compositions of colour and form produced under the influence of old Russian art. A l l this brought about a great flurry in Budapest at a time when Béla Kondor attracted at tention with his icon-like pictures. Unfortunately, excluding the work of Lajos Vajda, little had been said of the relation between the avant-garde and icon painting in Hungary. 39
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9. Béla Uitz: Icon Analysis with the Holy Trinity, 1922. HNG
10-11. The interior of the Uitz memorial exhibition at the National Gallery, 1977. Photos: HNG Archive, inv. no.: 20726/1980
ours. Taking along an over-size tape-recorder, I did several inter views with him, and gathered the press coverage of his exhibi tion. He said he needed a co-worker, not an art historian steeped in the aesthetics of György Lukács; he had had enough of those. Instead of half a year, I accepted to do the job in a month. I packed all day, reading the several copies of the documents of a life of vicissitudes, poring through his letters witnessing historical up heavals, sometimes combatively determined, sometimes pleading to be freed from Stalinist prison, discrimination, etc. Uitz was deeply attached to the analytical study sketches he had made on the basis of the golden section, Leonardo's and other renaissance masters' works, and surrounded himself with them as though they were a kind of fortress of refuge. The many rolled-up socialistrealist designs made in common studios for the Palace of Soviets or the façade of the Agricultural Exposition building from the 1940s had to be all looked at. Uitz himself could hardly tell his own works from those of others. Besides these, I kept showing the master the reproductions of his abstract works, and asking him questions on their whereabouts. For an answer, I either got a grunt or protracted silence. I asked him to take me to his flat, which was occupied by his son and his family. There was no chance of that; finally, we invited his son and grandchild to the studio to say 44
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12-13. Interior of the exhibition .'Avant .'garden in Mittel-Europa
good-bye. They did not want to believe that Uitz was leaving Moscow for good, but they brought along a roll, and laid it on the floor. After they left, Uitz said to me: "Now, here's what you've been looking for!" I saw rough, old canvases, rolled up unskil fully with the painted sides facing inwards. This was how five large-scale, L5 1.5 metre, abstract compositions and three also large-scale oils made in the early 1930s turned up. I could hardly believe my eyes! Fearful of harming them, I tried to unroll them ever so carefully. Yes, the reproduced pictures were there, five Icon Analyses, the colour effect being particularly enhanced by their gold or silver plating. (Ills. 8-9, Colour Plate X I V ) Uitz had not seen his masterworks for many years. And was utterly shocked at the sight, his tears running down his cheeks. When he was im prisoned on charges of formalism for a year and a half, his part ner, Oksana Pavlenko, salvaged these corpora delicti, and hid them somewhere in Moscow. No one had dared take them out ever since, and least of all was the family interested. We were vastly delighted to be able to put them on the lorry taking his personal belongings home. The restorers of the National Gallery put the canvases on stretchers, fixed up the minor damages, and the master presented three of them to the gallery. Having been the one to acquire these X
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1910-1930 in Munich, Haus der Kunst, 2002. Photos by Éva Bajkay
abstract pictures, I was to write their inventory cards! They were then stored, and I awaited their display anxiously. I was still waiting when the master died in 1972; the masterpieces would only be put on show in 1977, at a small memorial exhibition of his work on the ground floor of National Gallery now in its new building, the Buda Royal Palace. (Ills. 10-11) The other two abstract works had already begun their grand tour of Europe. They were on shown in Milan and Munich in 1971, because the head of the Galleria del Levante, Emilio Bertonati, had bought them. Bortnyik advised Uitz on matters of sales for he had already been an experienced and willing partner of Western collectors. A fine catalogue was published with an introduction by Eva Körner, with whom I visited many Hungarian artists and collectors in the company of the Italian critic. This was how the first Hungarian genuine avant-garde exhibition came into being. The Icon Analyses now in the possession of the National Gallery were brought up from the depths of the stores to be hung in the permanent exhibition on a focal end wall on the second floor of Building C between 1983 and 1986, as well as 1987 and 2003. Whenever I passed them, I always remembered what stroke of luck had preserved these pictures from final destruction, though it was with them that the National Gallery Uitz collection became complete. 49
With support from György Aczél, Pécs also tried to present Uitz's oeuvre in a separate building for a time. In 1972, soon after the master's death, negotiations began, and the Uitz Museum operated from 1978 to 1987, with loans from the National Gallery and further remains coming home from Moscow. Uitz's name was made genuinely famous not by his memorial museum, but by the international exhibitions of the Hungarian avant-garde; (Ills. 12-13) in Hungary, it was only on the centenary of the artist's birth that a monograph with an oeuvre catalogue could be published. The homecoming of the Uitz oeuvre was a sign of détente. Immediately afterwards, in 1970, the Tihanyi estate was brought home from Paris. And so was it no trifling matter in Hungary to have a Vasarely exhibition opened in the same year, and both Budapest and Pécs were bequeathed a wealth of works to fill a museum each. The most marked sign of the endeavour to present the work of Hungarians living abroad was the exhibition called Homage to the Native Soil, which Krisztina Passuth curated at the Arts Hall in 1970. A selection of the freshly acquired Uitzes and Tihanyis by the National Gallery were also put on at this show. This was thus a period acquisitions comparable only to that of the turn of the 19 and 20 centuries, when the masterworks of the previous century went into museum possession. In 1860, there was a national fundraising campaign to purchase the works of Károly Marko Sr. from Italy to enrich the arts collection of the National Museum. As far as I am concerned, I regarded it my duty to research the works of Hungarian avant-gardists that ended up in foreign possession as the only way to make up for their want at home, as an imperative part of acquisition policy. I was fortunate enough in being able to acquire for the National Gallery important materials. Thanks to her husband, Tibor Gergely, we could select from the estate of Anna Lesznai brought home from the USA in 1977 and arrange her retrospective. In 1995, it was also due to a bequeathing that the National Gallery managed to acquire - following vexing red-tape activity - the works of Gizella Dömötör and 50
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Hugó Mund from Argentine, long thought to have been lost. Also from the USA, the Hungarian-related works and a cross-section of the whole oeuvre of Andor Weininger came into the possession of the National Gallery in 2002. Highly appreciated on the contemporary art market, these internationally acknowledged works belonging to the classical avant-garde bear significant values and connections. Their acquisition, study and presentation belong to the lesser known chapters of the history of the National Gallery and forcedly belated Hungarian acquisitions. 55
NOTES 1 Kovalovszky, Márta. "Sanfte Jahreszeit zwischen Eis und Dürre." In: Knoll, Hans ed. Die zweite Öffentlichkeit. Kunst in Ungarn im 20. Jahrhundert. Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1999, pp. 182-211. * Without which one was a practical outlaw in the eyes of the authorities, especially the police - the trans. 2 According to his birth certificate, Béla Uitz was born in a German-speaking family at Temes-Mehala (now part o f Temesvár/Timisoara, Romania) in 1887; and, even at old age, this was the language he could most richly use, never learning Russian properly. 3 Possibly Antal Tóth, who had a job at the Sculpture Department after his practice term. Viktória Kovásznai and Gyöngyi Török from his year were employed by the National Gallery in 1968. 4 A Nyolcak és aktivisták. [Exhibitions of the Department of Prints and Drawings 1.] Curated and cat. int. by Pataky. Dénes. Budapest: Hungarian National Gallery (hereinafter: HNG), 1961; L'Art Hongrois du vingtième siècle. Le cercle des Huits et des Activistes. L'exposition a été réalisée par Krisztina Passuth et Márta Kovalovszky. Texte d'introduction Krisztina Passuth. Székesfehérvár: Galerie István Csók, 10 octobre - 31 décembre 1965. Székesfehérvár: Fehér M . Ny., 1965. 5 "Uitz Béla hatvanadik születésnapjára." Szabad Művészet, December, 1947, p. 241. 6 Pogány, Ö. Gábor. A magyar festészet forradalmárai. [1947], pp. 19-20.
Budapest: Officina, n.d.
7 "He moved to the Soviet Union later, where he was offered significant commis sions worthy of his bold style", op. cit., p. 63. 8 For the photo documentation of the 1958 visit at the HNG, sec HNG Archive, inv. nos.: 9801-9012/1958. 9 Mihályfi, Ernő. " A Magyar Forradalmi Művészet kiállítása Moszkvában." Műterem, 1958, no. 3, pp. 10-17. 10 Labourer representation continued to have a central role until the late 70s. See: Derkovits és a szocialista művészet. Exhibition curated by Kovalovszky, Márta and Júlia Szabó, cat. int. by Szabó, Júlia. Székesfehérvár: Csók István Képtár, 1968; Szocialista képzőművészek csoportja. Cat. int. by Oelmacher, Anna. Bu dapest: H N G , 1964; Borbély, László ed. Revolutionäre Kunst in Ungarn 1900-1925. Cat. int. by Pogány, Ö. Gábor. Karl-Marx-Stadt and Leipzig, 197374; Aradi, Nóra. Munkásábrázolás a magyar képzőművészetben. N.p. [Bu dapest]: Kossuth Kiadó, 1976. 11 Bölöni, György. "Egy forradalmi nemzedék." In: Műterem, 1958, no. 1, p. 4. Here Pór, Berény. Uitz, Derkovits, and Dcsi Huber were no longer dubbed for malists, but called exemplary. See Pataki, Gábor. " A 'hivatott kertészek'. Képzőművészeti kritika 1957-1965 között." In: Nagy, Ildikó ed. Hatvanas évek. Budapest: Képzőművészeti K i a d ó - H N G - L u d w i g Múzeum, 1991, pp. 28-32. Ernő Mihályfi, whose stringent views determined the tone the Magyar Nemzet took on, had collected these painters already in the pre-war years. It was in the early sixties that Eva Korner began to work on her scholarly monograph o f Derkovits, which was to be published in 1968. 12 Minutes taken at the meeting o f the activists o f the Association o f Hungarian Fine and Applied Artists on September 24, 1956, Archive o f the Research Insti tute for Art History o f the Hungarian Academy of Sciences inv. no.: MKCS-C1-2/1976.8. 13 Ék, Sándor. A realizmus zászlója alatt. A festő világnézete. Int. by Pogány, Ö. Gábor. Budapest: Képzőművészeti Alap, 1954; Pogány, Ö. Gábor ed. Sándor Ék. Malerei und Grafik. Berlin, 1960; Pogány, Ö. Gábor. Ék Sándor. Budapest: Corvina, 1963. 14 According to the data found in the Archive of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Sándor Ék chaired the Department o f Graphic Arts from 1949 to 1973.
15 Sándor Ék presented 37 posters by himself and Soviet Artists to the HNG, inv. nos.: X Y 58.1-XY 58.37.
38 Mácza, János, iskustvo sovremennoy Yevropi. Moscow, 1926; Idem. Beta Uitz. Tvorcheskiyput. Moscow-Leningrad, 1932.
16 The debate was prompted by an article justifying abstract art which Lajos Németh published in the magazine: "Megjegyzések képzőművészetünk helyzetéről." In: Új írás, 1961, no. 8. pp. 738-744.
39 The Pushkin Museum acquired 131 works. These could not be exhibited in Moscow however much the artist had wished to. Twenty years had to pass for that. See: Nikolaevna Shalabaeva, Vera ed. Beta Uitz. Moscow: Sovetskii khudoznik, 1986.
17 Pogány, Ö. Gábor. " A Művészet feladatairól." In: Művészet, 1960, no. 1, p. 3.; Pátzay, Pál. "Korunk esztétikai zűrzavara." In: Kortárs, 1962, no. 12. 18 Pogány, Ö. Gábor. " A szocialista realizmus a képzőművészetben." In: Tár sadalmi Szemle, 1965, nos. 8-9, p. 123. 19 A copy of the Kassák-Vasarely Folder (Paris, 1961) which Kassák kindly ded icated to Pogány is now in the possession of the National Széchényi Library. This was not on sale from his estate to the HNG; his widow gave a flat refusal when library colleagues mentioned to her my interest in purchasing it for the gallery. 20 Csaplár, Ferenc. "Visszatérés Európába. Kassák képzőművészete külföldön az 1960-as években." Ín: Elet és Irodalom, April 13, 2007, pp. 17, 22. 21 Funded by the Ministry of Culture, a significant material was purchased from the widow. Inv. nos.: 1950-3439-3460. 22 It was in 1968, that Imre Bak and István Nádler put up their first show in the West, in the Gallerie Müller, Stuttgart. 23 Kassák Lajos emlékkiállítás and Hommage á Kassák, Székesfehérvár, István Király Múzeum, 1968. 24 The exhibitors were Imre Bak, Krisztián Frey, Tamás Hcncze, György Jovánovics, Ilona Keserű, Gyula Konkoly, László Lakner, Sándor Molnár, István Nádler, Ludmil Siskov, Endre Tót. See: Dokumentum 1969-70. Ed., with an in troduction in English by Sinkovits, Péter. Budapest, 1970 (samizdat). 25 In 1967, the HNG arranged major retrospectives for Jenő Gadányi and István Nagy. The Uitz show was put up after the Ferenc Medgyessy memorial exhibition. 26 Major purchases from the Pór estate took place in 1975. See H N G inv. nos.: F 75.314 - F 75.502. 27 These included from the material o f the FtNG: The Plains in Hungarian Paint ing, 1967; 20" -Century Hungarian Painting, 1968; Béni Ferenczy and Ferenc Medgyessy, 1969. 28 Following exhibitions at Galerie Denise René, Paris, Galeria Gmurzynska, Cologne, Galleria Breton, Milan, and Galleria del Levante in Munich and Milan, etc., the real breakthrough was made by the West-Berlin exhibition (at the Kun stverein) and catalogue: Roters, Eberhard and Weitemeier, Hannah. Avantgarde Osteuropa 1910-1930. N.p. [Berlin]: Deutsche Gesellschaft fúr Bildende Kunst (Kunstverein Berlin), 1967. 29 Dóra Maurer's personal recollections made to the author. At her exhibition at the Szentendre A r t M i l l in 2005, she presented her own works as parallels of Uitz's constructivist Analyses made in Vienna. 30 Uitz. Int. by Münnich, Ferenc. N.p. [Budapest]: Corvina, 1967. 31 HNG Archive, inv. no.: 18207/1969. 32 Uitz Béla kiállítása a szovjet múzeumokban és a művész tulajdonában levő művekből. Int. by Mácza, János. Ed. by Konlha, Sándor. Budapest: H N G - K u l turális Kapcsolatok Intézete, 1968. 33 Németh, Lajos. "The Art o f Béla Uitz." New Hungarian Quarterly, 1968, no. 29, pp. 176-180; Oelmacher, Anna. "Uitz Béla kiállítása a Magyar Nemzeti Galériában." Magyar Nemzet, October 27, 1968, p. 11 ; Patkó, Imre. " A szív és az értelem képei." Tükör, November 26, 1968, p. 8-9; Peraeczky, Géza. " A for radalom klasszikusa." Elet és Irodalom, November 2, 1968, p. 3; and over fifty 1
other articles and reviews. 34 Béla Kondor: Illustrations to the Dózsa Peasant War in 1514, 1956, copper-plate engravings, 7-31. HNG inv. no.: 77.253. 35 This conception was to materialize in the exhibitions arranged with his cooper ation in the East-Berlin Neue Berliner Galerie and in the exhibition room of the old town hall in Prague in 1970. 36 Irrespective of the ascendant political regime, from 1914, works by Uitz were continually acquired by the Museum o f Fine Arts and later the National Gallery according to their acquisition records. 37 Péter, Imre. " A monumentalizmus bűvöletében." Művészet, 1966, no. 1, p. 10.
40 See the conference entitled The Icon and Modernity at the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, New York, 2003. 41 Konstruktive Kunst 1915-1930. Frankfurt am Main: Frankfurter Kunstverein, 1966. 42 In the Vienna magazine Egység, June 22, 1922 and September 16, 1922. See: Bajkay, Éva. Konstruktivizmus. Budapest: Gondolat, 1979, pp. 78-84; Passuth, Krisztina. "Magyar-orosz avantgárd kapcsolatok a húszas években." In: idem. Tranzit. Budapest: Új Művészet, 1996, pp. 129-136; Bajkay, Éva. "Béla Uitz' Se ries Analysis in the Scottish National Gallery of Modem Art, Edinburgh." In: Ernyey, Gyula ed. Britain and Hungary 3. Budapest: Hungarian University o f Craft and Design, 2005, pp. 157-165. 43 Bajkay, Éva. "Uitz Béla négyszáz ismeretlen műve." In: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Evkönyve 2. Budapest: Magyar Nemzeti Galéria, 1974, pp. 117-126, 242-245. 44 These "oral history" interviews were the basis of my book, Uitz Béla. Szemtől szemben. Budapest: Gondolat, 1974. On the basis of resolution no. 29/1969 by the presidium of the Academy o f Sciences, the serial publication of the sources and the series were to be prepared; obviously, this had been behind my com missioning. 45 The album can be found in the HNG Archive. 46 Zoltán Nagy was on a post-graduate scholarship in Moscow, but the old master could not stand him; we could not even have him help us. 47 Uitz was allotted flat no. 262 at 66 Leninsky Prospekt in Moscow. Teréz Kassák often stayed there, but, as their marriage had failed a long time ago, Uitz would not go to the flat at all. 48 HNG inv. nos.: 72.35 T - 72.39 T and 72.127 T. 49 Bertonati, Emilio ed. Avantgardia ungherese / Ungarische Avantgarde /Hun garian Avantgarde 1909-1930. Int. by Körner, Eva. Milano and München: Gal leria del Levante, 1971. 50 Romváry, Ferenc ed. Uitz Múzeum. Pécs: Janus Pannonius Múzem, 1978. 51 Kunst in Ungarn 1900-1950, Luzern, Kunstmuseum, 1975; L'art en Hongrie 1905—1930 art et révolution, Paris, Musée d ' A r t moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1979; Klassiker der Avantgarde - Die ungarischen Konstruktivisten, Innsbruck, Galerie im Taxispalais, 1983; Standing in the Tempest. Painters of the Hunga rian Avant-garde 1908-1930, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1991; Hungarian Constructivism 1918-1936. Tokyo, Watari-um, 1993; Ungarn - Avantgarde im 20. Jahrhundert. Linz, Neue Galerie, 1998 and Valencia, 1999; Central Euro pean Avant-gardes: Exchange and Transformation, 1910-1930. Los Angeles, County Museum o f Art, 2002; lAvantlgarden in Mittel-Europa 1910-1930. Munich, Haus der Kunst and Berlin, Martin-Gropius-Bau, 2002/03; Zeit des Aufbruchs. Budapest und Wien zwischen Historismus und Avantgarde, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum Palais Harrach, 2003 and St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum, 2005. 52 Bajkay, Éva. Uitz Béla. Budapest: Képzőművészeti Alap, 1987. 53 Following Uitz's retrospective and the inclusion o f his works in main body of the HNG collections, a retrospective o f Sándor Bortnyik followed in the spring of 1969, with another after his death in 1977. The HNG was bequeathed quite a num ber of works from his estate, many more than from the one of Kassák by his widow in 1983, which had been previously even more thoroughly sifted by foreigners. 54 Or, for instance, the HNG's Department of Prints and Drawings acquired dra wings by Mihály Zichy from St. Petersburg and by Mihály Munkácsy from Düs seldorf. 55 Lesznai Anna. Cat. int. by Bajkay, Éva. Budapest: HNG, 1977; Bajkay, Éva and Jenő Murádin. Dömötör Gizella, Mund Hugó Nagybányától Buenos Airesig. Miskolc: Mission Art, 1996; Bajkay, Éva: Az utópia bűvöletében. Weininger Andor. Pécs: Pro Pannónia, 2006.
Szubjektív - avantgárd - gyűjtés - történet
Az 1960-as évek második felében, az új gazdasági mechanizmus rövid korszakában új kulturális lehetőségek kínálkoztak. A vas függöny óvatos feszegetésével az értelmiség egy része már kül földre utazhatott, és megindulhatott a modernség iránti tájékozódás. Ebben az időszakban, 1967 őszétől kezdtem ösztön díjjal a Magyar Nemzeti Galériában dolgozni. 1968 őszén várat lanul ért Pogány Ö. Gábor főigazgató megbízása, hogy a kiállítására hazalátogató Uitz Béla titkára legyek. Az egyetemen nem tanultunk a művészről, aki 1919 végén hagyta el az országot. Uitz az 1920-24 közötti bécsi, közben az 192l-es moszkvai, valamint az 1924—26-os franciaországi termé keny évei után Párizsban nem kapott letelepedési engedélyt, így vállalta el Moszkvában a Vhutemaszban a főiskolai tanári állást. A nehéz évtizedek után, a I I . világháborút követően kézenfekvő lett volna hazatérnie a szovjet csapatok uralta Magyarországra. Ortutay Gyula miniszterként hívta is, sőt 1947-ben, 60. születés napján köszöntő cikkek láttak napvilágot, köztük több Pogány Ö. Gábortól. Miért nem jött haza Uitz Béla sem 1948-ban, sem 1958-ban? Pontosan nem lehet tudni, de jó megérzései és informátorai le hettek. A formalizmus vádját megkapta már 1936-ban a Szovjet unióban, s joggal félt hazatelepülni az itteni sztálinizmus idején. Magánemberként minden bizonnyal hazavágyott; 1958-ban járt Budapesten, s fotók tanúsítják, hogy Pogány végigkísérte a 19. századi kiállításon. A korszak azonban nem Uitz, hanem sokkal inkább a szovjet hadsereg tagjaként hazatért Ék Sándor ideje volt, akiről Pogány könyvet írt, s aki müveiben Uitz gyenge epigonja volt és maradt. 0 ragadta kezébe a grafikai oktatást a Képzőművé szeti Főiskolán 1949-től. Az MNG plakátgyűjteményének alapját az általa ajándékozott agitprop plakátok képezték. 1965-től lassan változott a kultúrpolitika. Már lezajlott a kor szerűségről szóló vita az Új írásban, mellyel párhuzamosan a Po gány által szerkesztett Művészet folyóiratban keményen bírálták a „dekadenciát". Pogány 1965-ben a Társadalmi Szemlében még a szocialista realizmust védelmezte, pedig korábban kapcsolatban állt Kassák Lajossal, akinek párizsi katalógusához bevezetőt i r i ez állítólag Kossuth-díjába került. Uitznak lehetett tudomása minderről, hiszen a hírek Budapesten élő felesége, azaz Kassák húga és mások révén is elértek Moszkvába. A Nemzeti Galéria 1965-ben Derkovits Gyula-kiállítást rende zett. A főigazgató ekkor Uitz műveinek vásárlására is hangsúlyt helyezett. Az ún. forradalmi hagyomány dogmatizmuson túllépő szélesebb kutatása, a modernség felé nyitó szemlélet tehát fon tolva járható útnak tűnt. A klasszikus baloldali avantgárd művé
szeti és társadalmi utópiája a szocializmusban lassan elfogadott lett, a kultúrpolitika egyre inkább nyitottá vált az 1950-es évek végéig megtagadott modernizmusra. így lett Uitz ismeretlen életmüve többszörösen is aktuálissá - ehhez talán Kassák nyugati újrafelfedezése is hozzájárult. A művész belátta, hogy a „puha dik tatúra" idején már nem kell félnie Magyarországon a formalista kiközösítéstől, vagy a külföldről hazatelepülőket korábban sújtó kémkedés koholt vádjától. Ilyen előzmények után került 1968 végén egyszerre sor az MNG-ben Uitz kiállítására (a szovjet múzeumokban és a művész tulajdonában lévő müvekből) és az Iparterv dísztermében az új avantgárd fellépésére. Uitz munkásságának bemutatása már nem ütközött nehéz ségbe. Bécsi és párizsi avantgárd munkáit nem Nyugatról, hanem mivel emigrációja stációin magával vitte, Moszkvából hozták haza. Ekkor élénkült meg az érdeklődés Nyugat-Európában a kelet-európai avantgárd iránt. Itthon is az elfeledett magyar avant gardistát várták, főleg a fiatalok. Mint a levelek tanúsítják, Uitz utolsó vágyai közé tartozott egy budapesti és moszkvai kiállítás megvalósítása. A rendezésre Pogány Kontha Sándort kérte fel. A történelem és a sztálini kultúrpolitika szorításában megtört, s 81 évesen a dogmatikus gondolkodásra már nemcsak hajló, hanem belecsontosodott mester nehéz partner volt. Kiállítása azonban méltán nagy feltűnést keltett, és sokoldalú sikert aratott. A sajtó visszhang minden képzeletet felülmúlt. A reveláció erejével ha tottak absztrakt bécsi munkái, az orosz avantgárd, a régi ikonfestészet és pravoszláv templomépítészet hatása alatt készült nagy erejű, addig teljesen ismeretlen főművei. A General Luddrézkarcsorozat (1923, Bécs) az elvont fonnakíserietek hasznosí tását, a konstruktivizmustól a figurativitásba és az agitatív tematikába való visszalépést jelezte. Elvont, linearista Analízissorozata (1921-22, Bécs) az akkori értelmezésben sémául szolgált az angol géprombolók történetének feldolgozásához. A cinklemezre karcolt végső megoldások forradalmian hatottak a magyar grafikára. Az 1960 körüli időszak a szocreáltól könnyebben függetlenedő grafika virágkora volt. Kondor Béla diplomamunkája 1956-ban a General Ludd indította grafikai hagyományból merített, de míg Uitz az új formateremtéstől visszafordult a historikus, ideologi kus „tendenemüvészet" felé, Kondor a maga Dózsa-sorozatával éppen az ellenkező utat járta. Nemcsak a grafikusi életmű hatott azonban az újrafelfedezés erejével: a kollektív, közösségi művé szet ideálját megtestesítő muráliák korigényével egybevágott Uitz korábbi, monumentalista törekvése.
Uitz egy sajátos, konstruktív törekvést képviselt, melyből több út ágazott szét, s melyet a művésznek a klasszikus nemzetközi avantgárdban való közvetlen részvétele hitelesített. Az időközben eltelt ötven év alatt sikerült teljesen a feledés homályába rejteni Uitz közvetítő szerepét Kelet és Nyugat avantgardistái között. Máig sem győzzük eléggé tudatosítani azt a tényt, hogy elsőként ö publikálta Bécsben Malevics szuprematista kiáltványát - saját készítésű dúcokról nyomva az illusztrációkat - , Rodcsenko és Sztyepanova konstruktivista manifesztumát, valamint Pevsner és Gabo ún. Realista manifesztumát. Erről már Uitz maga sem be szélt, a korabeli dokumentumokból, lapokból és fotókból derült ki. A kiállítás végeztével a müvek egy részét a magyar állam meg vásárolta a Galéria részére, s további 400 darabot a művész aján dékba adott. Ezután Uitz visszatért Moszkvába, s csak 1969 végérc döntött a végleges hazatelepülés mellett. A műtermi anyag teljes felszámolása következett. Egy valamikori iskolateremben élt a művész vaságy, asztal, szék, hokedli, festőállvány, a nincstelenség megrázó kellékei és papírhalmazok teljes összevisszaságában. Ennek összerendezésére kértek meg engem akkor. Minden nap elővettem a Bécsben készült olajképek régi reprodukcióit, és ma kacs kitartással kérdeztem a mestert az absztrakt kompozíciók hollétéről. Csak kis morgás, vagy semmi volt a válasz. Végül uno kája áthozott egy poros tekercset. „Na, itt van, amit annyira kere sel" - mondta Uitz. Durva, régi festővásznakat láttam, szak szerűtlenül, festékes oldalukkal befelé tekerve, köztük öt darab 1,5*1,5 méteres absztrakt kompozíció és másik három nagymé retű olajfestmény az 1930-as évek elejéről. Uitz ekkor látta v i szont főmüveit sok év után. Döbbenten állt, nézte, és potyogtak a könnyei. Amikor a formalizmus vádjával másfél évet töltött a sztá
lini börtönben, élettársa mentette meg ezeket a műveket, és rejtette el Moszkvában. A mester személyes holmijaival együtt hoztuk őket haza. A képek bemutatására csak a művész 1972-ben bekövetkezett halála után öt évvel került sor, a Budavári Palota C épületének földszintjén rendezett kamaratárlaton. Az Ikonanalízisek később 1983-86, majd 1987-2003 között tartósan kint függtek a C épü let I I . emeletének végfalán, s a magyar avantgárd nagy nemzet közi kiállításain ismertté tették Uitz nevét. Idehaza a művész centenáriumára jelenhetett meg ceuvre-katalógussal ellátott tudo mányos monográfiám. Az életmű hazakerülése az enyhülési korszaknak volt köszön hető, ahogy utána érkezett haza Párizsból Tihanyi Lajos hagya téka is. A gyűjteménygyarapításnak olyan szakasza volt ez, amilyet csak a korábbi századfordulóról ismertünk. A modern művészet terén fontos hiánypótlásnak tekintettem a külföldre ke rült alkotások kutatását. Szerencse is kellett a gyüjteményezéshez: 1977-ben Lesznai Anna munkásságából válogathattunk férje, Gergely Tibor jóvoltából, amikor az USA-ból hazakerült hagya téki kiállítását megrendeztük. 1995-ben Argentínából kaptuk meg Dömötör Gizella és Mund Hugó müveit, melyeket már rég elkallódottnak hittünk. Az 1986-ban New Yorkban meghalt Weininger Andor hazai vonatkozású és emellett az oeuvre teljes keresztmet szetét nyújtó anyagát 2002-ben szereztük meg. Ezek a mai műke reskedelemben legtöbbre tartott klasszikus avantgárd müvek sajátos, nemzetközileg is elismert érték- és kapcsolathordozók. Megszerzésük, feldolgozásuk és bemutatásuk az intézmény és az itthon kényszerűen megkésett modern gyűjteménygyarapítás tör ténetének kevéssé ismert fejezetei.
