Tivadar Bertalan painter, graphic artist, set designer, writer

“Tivadar Bertalan is the prophet of space. His designs are promises and enchantments of the shrieking orgasm of imagination.” (Gyula Hernádi: Bertalan Tivadar, Bertalan, Agroinform, 2011, p. 5.)

His creative work in film began in 1950. Film sets emerged in symbiosis with his paintings and visual designs, his word-pictures and picture-words. Even in 2016 the active creative phase of the “prophet of space” was not a closed oeuvre. He still dreams his visions onto canvas, visions whose inexhaustible source lies in the themes of his applied design work, while a series of autonomous works born from his moods can be seen at his exhibitions.

He revered as his master Sándor Bortnyik, the painter he met during his studies who was rector of the Hungarian Academy of Applied Arts in the 1950s, but his artistic development was also shaped by his teachers Gusztáv Oláh and Teréz Nagyajtay. His professors, alongside their design work, were superb draughtsmen, and they enriched their students with countless ideas for the artistic realisation of their designs. All this combined with Bertalan’s own artistic sensitivity and with a sudden, impulsive “study trip abroad” in the mid-1940s, when he followed the unfolding of avant-garde painting all the way to Australia. Film art cannot exist without set and production design, and in this field Tivadar Bertalan played a decisive role. Director Zoltán Várkonyi was also formative in the evolution of his career. They worked together on the production Csutak és a szürke ló (Csutak and the Grey Horse). The director trusted Bertalan’s concepts blindly – at times even signing a blank design sheet as a gesture of confidence in his collaborator. Among his international projects, the designer highlighted as a defining experience the time when, for director Christian-Jaques, they built an enormous circus tent on Lumumba Street (now Róna Street) for the sets of Árpád a cigány (Árpád the roma). Monumental quantities of materials and numerous engineers brought to life the spatial worlds born from Bertalan’s brush. He also worked with Miklós Jancsó, Woody Allen, Jean Delannoy (then president of the French Film Academy), and many other renowned Hungarian and international directors. This achievement alone would make Tivadar Bertalan stand out among creators. Yet for him this is only background, an introduction – for he defines himself primarily as a visual artist: painter and graphic artist. “Of course, writing cannot exactly be called a marginal pastime either, as his eight published volumes attest. He has claimed his own creative independence. He makes you laugh and strikes deeply at the heart.” (András Gyürky: Képzőművészeten innen, irodalmon túl, (On this side of the visual arts, beyond literature) Műhely, 2012/1, pp. 35–39.)

His paintings – from Színház (Theatre), Bábszínház (Puppet Theatre) and Bohócok (Clowns) to the more elusive, abstract works and the Metamorfózis (Metamorphosis) series – all cry out for canvas. The painter’s unique vision finds form in panel paintings, stage designs, words and illustrations alike. In his volumes A mindenség púpjától (From the Hump of the Universe) and A Töpörin az angyal (The Angel Töpörin) he creates as sole author and graphic artist: Bertalan – with Bertalan. Every painting and every text is a new enchantment, born with the unspoken aim of allowing us to see the invisible.

Tivadar Bertalan’s first film set design was the young film director Béla Takács’s experiment in 1955: the Bartók-emlékfilm (Bartók Memorial Film), made for the 10th anniversary of Béla Bartók’s death. “It is fitting today to remember this honourable attempt, which may still have remained caught in the now untenable division between the ‘folklorist’ and the ‘avant-gardist’ Bartók. Yet let us not fail to mention the exemplary intention: Takács, aligning himself with Bartók’s programme of ‘the brotherhood of peoples’, evoked the memory of the ‘folklorist’ Bartók, eliminating all nationalist overtones.” (Zoltai Dénes: “A Bartóki ihletés” – Bartókian Inspiration, Filmvilág.hu, 2012.) A decade and a half later, he also immortalised composer Béla Bartók in one of his paintings. Film – set – visual world – painting: in his applied and autonomous works alike, Bertalan’s art can be traced through every medium and theme. Jean Delannoy, president of the French Film Academy, called him “the master of theory and practical execution, the world’s best art director.” (J. Delannoy, 1984, quoted in Bertalan portrait film, 2014.) The praise is exceptional, considering that screenwriter and director Dr. Jean Delannoy held distinctions such as member of the Cannes jury, Palme d’Or laureate, Grand Prize winner at Cannes, and honorary César recipient. In the golden age of French cinema, during his active directing years, he seldom bestowed such accolades on art directors. Bertalan was likely the only European production designer to earn this honour. He and Tivadar Bertalan worked together on three films: Anna Karenina, Márton testvér (Brother Márton) and Nagy Károly (Charlemagne). Entire cities had to be designed, built and their visual elements manufactured. Sometimes locations had to be found; from concept to completion, the production designer was responsible for everything in these international projects – hence the title “art director.” For Bertalan, film design was created through teamwork, emerging from consultations with the director and technical crew, and from discussions of alternative visual ideas. This was supported by his exceptional drawing skill and graphic expressiveness. Meanwhile, his autonomous creative work also flourished: panel paintings, oil pastels, and images of film sets made with pencil, chalk and tempera. Directors, both Hungarian and international, did not merely receive a concept from Bertalan – they were presented with the visual world of their dreams, lifted into images, narrated through graphics, and transformed into artworks independent from the applied task. In Hungary, his name is best known from celebrated films and series such as the Hungarian TV drama A Tenkes kapitánya (Captain of Tenkes) and Tüskevár (Thorn Castle).

His film designs were born from images: he painted and envisioned the scenes, which were then broken down by the production teams into architectural technical drawings and structural plans so that the design traced onto drafting paper could become reality. Architects and assistant architects created the set elements based on the workshop drawings and under Tivadar Bertalan’s direction. There were foreign productions in which hundreds of people – decorators, engineers, architects – took part in the realisation of the art director’s instructions. Spaces and cities had to be imagined and sought out according to the films’ themes, from Róna Street to Fót and even as far as the Soviet Union. Western European locations, however, he could only seek in his mind, capturing imagined moments with his brush for French, English, German and American productions. Outdoor sets – entire cities – were built in Fót, often spilling out of the studio building and dominating the surrounding fields. Bertalan’s world, the stage of almost every imagined city, was realised in the open-air studio at Fót.

While working on Hungarian television films, he met theatre and film director Jenő Horváth. After seeing Bertalan’s film images, Horváth commissioned him to design the visual world for the 1981 Troilus and Cressida production of the Szigligeti Theatre in Szolnok. His creative partner, costume designer Erzsébet Mialkovszky, worked alongside him. The production featured a puritanical set resembling a platform, combining filmic imagery and strongly focused lighting effects, faithfully reflecting the director’s vision and giving space to the expressive power of the costumes.

Thirty years later, as an honorary citizen of Újpest, he received Gábor Harsányi’s invitation to design a theatrical world premiere. Pesti srácok (Pest Boys) – directed by László Dózsa – was realised at the Újpest Theatre. Its theme was a defining memory of his youth. Young aspiring artists lie on the floor somewhere in a run-down cultural hall. They are at a freshman camp preparing for their introductory university performance. They are waiting for the acting teacher who will decide whether they are suitable for the profession. They must perform a story recounting the main events of the 1956 Revolution. Due to an unexpected turn, the play suddenly becomes serious – they must play for their lives. This premiere, a youth production intended for students, told the story of the 1956 Revolution, civil liberties and oppression. In Tivadar Bertalan’s career, this theatrical design work of 2011 blended with his own adolescence, the experiences he lived through, the insights he wrote down about key historical events, the lessons of decades spent in education and pedagogy, the cinematic visuality of his work, the defining settings of his life and studio, and Újpest itself. In his visual world and chosen methods, pencil, chalk, oil – any material capable of giving form to his expression – continue to coexist within him. He was justly awarded historical recognition as well. In 2006, on the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Revolution, at the Lithea Bookhouse event, he received the 1956 – Memorial Certificate for his illustrated books depicting the turning points of Hungarian history. Lipi and Hangok a papírgalacsinból (Voices from the Paper Crumple) are different approaches to the same emotional world. Élet – Rajz – Regény (Life – Drawing – Novel) contains autobiographical episodes in which the currents of historical events abruptly redirected the paths he had chosen in life.

As a lifetime achievement awardee of the 40th Hungarian Film Festival, his art embodies a “symbiosis of illustration and text”. “All genres are identical, yet every theme demands its own genre. An artist is capable of practising all genres. If one truly masters a single genre, then one can master the others as well, provided one learns the tools of expression. Some themes call for an oil painting, some call for writing, and some inner impulse calls for something entirely different.” (Máté Sulyok: “Ötven kiló pausz – Beszélgetés Bertalan Tivadar látványtervezővel, a 40. filmszemle életműdíjasával” – Fifty Kilos of Tracing Paper – Conversation with Tivadar Bertalan, Production Designer and Lifetime Awardee of the 40th Film Festival)

His art album – featuring his graphics, set designs, panel paintings, canvases and writings – was published in 2011 under the title Bertalan Album. “Tivadar Bertalan the writer, the visual artist, the thinker, the humour-filled ark of the covenant, the bearer of a tent-full of the echo of philosophical laughter.” (Szakolczay: Bertalan, Agroinform, 2011, p. 3.) His strikingly raw self-portrait on the cover faithfully reflects the precision of his material use and the puritanical clarity of his visual expression. The “Eötvös-clown” (as he called himself for decades) wears a peculiar grimace – a self-reflective gesture of the creator stepping out of the role of the “little man”. “Happiness and joy possess a deceptive trait: they reside in our memories and our hopes. They rarely allow themselves to be caught in our present. When our present becomes the past, they appear stealthily; when our future becomes the present, they vanish like a faithless lover. And if happiness and joy keep their distance even from our memories and our hopes, then we have no present, and we ourselves do not exist. The Statistical Office need not count on us. As for that transitional state we collectively call life: here I still am, however unfathomable it may be, and – unable to do anything else, only always something else – I paint with words and speak with pictures, while placing my trust in my disappointments.”

In 2014, at the request of the MMA, director János Domokos filmed the portrait documentary Látni a láthatatlant (Seeing the Invisible) about Tivadar Bertalan in the painter’s studio. In 2015, his lifetime retrospective exhibition, titled Képszavak és szóképek (Image-Words and Word-Images), was presented in the Vigadó Gallery of the Hungarian Academy of Arts. Its curator was László Székely – Kossuth Prize-winning space and set designer, Artist of the Nation, full member and academician of the MMA – who highlighted the defining feature of Bertalan’s career: his multifaceted, multi-genre way of thinking. Tivadar Bertalan is a member of the Hungarian Writers’ Union, a founding member of the Hungarian Caricature Artists’ Section, a founder of the Újpest Artists’ Society, Honorary Citizen of Újpest and Budapest, recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 40th Hungarian Film Festival, and a full member and academician of the Hungarian Academy of Arts.

Tivadar Bertalan is the Creative Thought itself, casting his newly born texts, visions, and reinterpreted symbols onto paper or canvas – his communicative artistic reflections. The figure of the still-active “Eötvös Clown” is made great and inescapable by his works.

His bibliography – encompassing solo and group exhibitions, short films and portrait films, theatre designs, film sets, visual designs for Hungarian and international feature films, television series, illustrations, graphics, single-author volumes, critical writings, paintings, and panel works – attests to the unbroken continuity of a career spanning nearly seven decades.

[2016]

The author of this career portrait is a theatre historian and the head of scenography collections, OSZMI (Hungarian Theatre Museum and Institute)