Ferenc Lantos was one of the most influential figures of 20th-century Hungarian art with a constructivist stance. His career was defined by the “unity of artistic and pedagogical creativity,” from which he consciously sought to exclude attachment to passing art movements or fashions. According to his own account, his creative program followed three main directions. First, keeping in mind the inner relationships of nature, he sought visual variations of operations that functioned as analogies to nature – in other words, “visual condensations” that, abstracted from individual objects, referred to the entirety of the material world while still preserving the interconnections between natural and artificial environments. Throughout his life, music served as a constant source of inspiration – through his improvisational wanderings infused with geometry,[1] he sought to explore “visual form-shaping that could be translated into sound,” an attempt to express the relationship between space and time. “With unwavering persistence he followed his own path, often in the face of fierce societal opposition, working amid conflicts as a painter of panel works, creator of unique and printed graphics, designer of public enamel friezes and porcelain objects – as an ever-experimenting artist searching for new forms, as a developer of didactic methods, and as a mentor and spiritual guide to successive generations.”[2]
Lantos’s career began at the same time as socialist realism, but – as was the case with many mature artists of his time – his artistic ambitions never intersected with it in any way.[3] His first solo exhibition took place in 1957 at the Janus Pannonius Museum. At first, he chose traditional subjects, working within the framework of naturalistic painting and following the classical academic training and “traditions of tonal painting” (for example Szürkület [Twilight], Kilátás a Mecsekre [View of the Mecsek]). Later, through self-education and constant analysis – a necessary part of his pedagogical work – he developed his own style, one that strengthened his artistic self-awareness, independence, and sense of inviolability.[4] Although by the 1960s he had reached the stage of nonfigurative representation, his distinctive form of abstraction – revealing a special balance between rational and organic vision – remained the cornerstone of his artistic creed throughout his career.[5]
He met his mentor, Ferenc Martyn, at the age of sixteen in Pécs; Martyn was among the “prohibited” artists. Alongside the works of Jenő Barcsay and Endre Domanovszky, the paintings of several foreign artists associated with geometric art had a major influence on Lantos. His 1963 painting Szigliget (Szigliget) can, for instance, be seen as an heir to Barcsay’s constructivist landscape painting. Several of his decorative, surrealistic works from the mid-1960s reveal the impact of Paul Klee (Kompozíció körökkel (Composition with Circles), 1964; Éjszakai város (Night City), 1964; Balett (Ballet), 1965), while traces of pop art also appear in some later works – even as he successfully merged constructivism with surrealism.
In the 1960s, Lantos became a well-known figure in the artistic life of Pécs. The curator of his 1967 exhibition at the Bercsényi College of the Budapest University of Technology was Tihamér Gyarmati. From then on, his works regularly appeared in cross-border exhibitions presenting contemporary Hungarian constructive art. In 1969, he took part in the Szürenon exhibition held at the Kassák Lajos Cultural Centre.
The circle, as a geometric form, is the most frequent motif in his works – rounded shapes appear in countless variations throughout his art. In his 1967 painting Fej körökkel (Head with Circles), he formed the heads entirely from perfect circles. His 1969 work Keletkezés (Genesis) recalls the art of Dezső Korniss, who “developed his distinctive surreal and non-figurative style through the painterly metamorphosis of Hungarian folk motifs.”
From the following decade onward, Lantos became preoccupied with the effects on the eyes of parallel bands, which, according to László Beke, “resemble musical structures.” This is exemplified in works such as Vibrációk (Vibrations, 1982), Vonalnagyítások (Line Enlargements, 1979–1985), Szólamok (Voices, 1992), and Hangzások (Soundings, 1996). In these compositions, the regular patterning gradually transforms – parallel lines and geometric forms merge with a “pasty, expressive texture,” ultimately leading to a freer use of colour and form.
Lantos Ferenc also pursued significant pedagogical work. His talented and later highly successful students included members of the Pécsi Műhely (Pécs Workshop), an avant-garde circle of neo-constructivist and conceptual artists formed around 1970 and partly founded by him (Ferenc Ficzek, Károly Halász, Károly Kismányoki, Sándor Pinczehelyi, Kálmán Szíjártó, among others), as well as architect-artist Gábor Bachmann, and art historians Zsuzsa Varga and Irén Pilaszanovich. The success of his teaching stemmed from his integrative approach, examining and synthesizing various branches of the visual arts, and from his recognition that the study of vision and space – the creation of a “visual grammar” – was essential to the future of visual culture. According to Tamás Aknai, Lantos “left behind facts of significance in school and pedagogical history. There is no doubt that his presence must be reckoned with. For he was more than a painter – he was an institution, one who usually defined everything himself, yet remained a loyal friend and a man deeply devoted to his students. In this way, he provoked a lasting state of creative excitement in Hungarian visual-arts education.”
Classical music always played a central role in Lantos’s oeuvre. Around 1970, he began exploring ways to transpose musical rhythm onto the picture plane, while at other times he “sought pure structure in the playful verses of Sándor Weöres.” According to István Mészáros, Lantos’s career resembles “the improvisation of a gigantic piano passage, strung along to infinity.”
He also maintained close relationships with other cultural figures in Pécs – such as music teacher and conductor Mátyás Ivasivka and literary historian Tamás Bécsi, who often invited him to lecture on the relationship between visual art and their respective disciplines – as well as with writer Bulcsú Bertha, who commissioned him to design the cover of his book Harlequin és szerelmese (Harlequin and His Beloved).
At the beginning of the decade, Lantos was granted the opportunity to hold annual exhibitions at the Janus Pannonius Museum in Pécs, which was one of the main centres of contemporary Hungarian art. Within the museum’s Modern Hungarian Gallery, the exhibition Mozgás ’70 (Movement ’70) was presented – the first “official” neo-avant-garde survey held in a public museum. It was organized as part of the 10th anniversary celebrations of the Pécs Ballet.[6] However, his exhibition scheduled for the following year at the same venue could only be held as a “private showing.”
Between 1972 and 1976, the Pécs museum also organized a five-part pedagogical exhibition series entitled Természet – Látás – Alkotás (Nature – Vision – Creation), in which Lantos summarized his artistic concepts. The series toured several locations across Hungary, concluding with a final presentation at the Hungarian National Gallery. The material was published in print the following year.
Lantos most frequently worked in oil and acrylic, though he also used enamel in some of his creations. On his approach to colour, he wrote: “Our goal should be to understand the harmony, rhythm, and relationships between colours (…). Naturally, we must not forget that the phenomenon represented in our painting must also have a structural foundation. But this structure should emerge solely through colour! This does not mean, however, that line and colour cannot coexist within a painting – only that the line must not overshadow colour, but rather support its expression.”
His public composition Szabad madár (Free Bird), located in Szigetvár, is also based on Mondrian-like colours, reducing the bird’s shape to a set of interlocking quarter-circle segments.
According to László Beke, Lantos’s “systems of variation are based on a grid structure, in which the intersections of arcs and straight lines generate repetitive, colour-filled divisions of the surface. The rotations and superimpositions of such structures around 1980 produced ‘interferences.’ At the same time, he emphasized the mathematical regularities he recognized in organic forms (for example, the Fibonacci sequence or the golden ratio).”
In 1980–1981, Lantos took part in the third section of the Tendenciák 1970–1980 (Tendencies 1970–1980) exhibition series, entitled Geometrikus és strukturális törekvések (Geometric and Structural Endeavors), held at the Óbuda Gallery of the Budapest Municipal Council, alongside twenty-seven other exhibitors. In the mid-1980s, he also exhibited abroad – in the United States (Unitarian Church of Adelphi, 1984) and in Finland (Lahti, 1985).
Throughout his life, Lantos Ferenc sought to express the inner interconnectedness of nature through visual means, a pursuit he supported with his numerous writings on visual art. He always worked according to his own convictions, even during the most difficult times, when his artistic interests were officially rejected.[7] While he may not have been the leading figure of the Pécs art scene, he is remembered as one of its greatest individual personalities. His frequent confrontations with cultural policy and his effective, forward-looking teaching made him widely respected not only in Pécs but throughout Hungary.
In 1999, the Ernst Museum honoured Lantos’s seventieth birthday with a major retrospective exhibition. In recognition of his artistic achievements, he was named an honorary citizen of Pécs, and on December 13, 2013, a permanent exhibition dedicated to his work opened in the upstairs galleries of the Vasváry House in Pécs.
[2017]
[1] László Fábián
[2] http://apagyi-lantos.hu/lantos-ferenc/en/
[3] Katalin Keserű, A pécsi képzőművészet mesterei. Foreword.
[4] http://epiteszforum.hu/nyomtatas/keseru-katalin-lantos
[5] Fábián
[6] Sándor Hornyik
http://artportal.hu/lexikon/egyebek/mozgas---70
[7] Fábián László’s monograph was titled accordingly as Kánonon kívül (Outside the canon).