András Galánfi teacher, performer, woodcarver, folk applied artist, awardee of the State Award for Excellence in Folk Art was born on 25 March 1945 in Hajdúszoboszló. His father and mother were teachers. His paternal grandfather was a master stonemason, who made most of the decorative stuccos on the main building of the Kossuth Lajos University in Debrecen. Besides his profession, he read a lot, and his poems were published in local newspapers. On his mother's side, the family came to the Great Hungarian Plain from Csíkcsekefalva (Ciucani, Romania) in Transylvania. His maternal grandfather was a butcher, president of the Craftsmen’ Corporation of Hajdúszoboszló; he used to serve as the chief elder of the church district of the Hungarian Reformed Church.
His father was released from French captivity at the end of World War II. After that, his mother devoted her life to raising András and his brother, while his father supported the family by working three jobs.
András Galánfi encountered the arts in his childhood: the cantor–teacher music teacher father educated his sons and other schoolchildren for the love of music, dance and poetry; however, he was most interested in sports and ball games. After his grammar school years in Hajdúszoboszló, he applied to the Teacher Training College in Debrecen. During his years at the college, he became a member of literary circles in the town, but he also had roles as an assistant actor in productions at the Csokonai Theatre. He graduated in 1966 and became a village teacher in Hajdúszovát.
In 1967, he began his military service in Baja, where during a three-day lone patrol he noticed the varied shapes of vine roots protruding from the ground in shell craters. Sometimes he recognised a bird, sometimes a horse's head, sometimes an old man. He began to carve and shape them with a knife on the spot. It was here that he decided to work with his hands and chose wood as his medium of expression. He brought back to the barracks three rucksacks full of ‘sculptures’, which were exhibited on the recommendation of the art-loving regimental medical officer, and he was allowed to spend the rest of his time in the army creating them.
On his return home, he taught the children who walked from miles around in the mornings in the farm school of the Korpád vineyard. On his way to the farm school, he was enchanted by the beauty of the lowland landscape and, as a man who worked with wood, he discovered the value of objects that were linked to the traditional way of life, serving it perfectly: sometimes ornamented, sometimes perfectly unornamented. He began to collect and interpret them, and his interest turned towards folk culture and object-forming folk art.
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In 1970 he received a diploma as a teacher of physical education from the Nyíregyháza Teacher Training College and for 10 years he was a teacher and coach, joining the circle of young artists who saw and presented the different branches of folk art and art as a unity.
At the beginning of the 1970s, cultural policy also gave a voice to those representatives of the intellectuals who were slowly gaining freedom of movement after the 1956 revolution, who wanted to see the disappearing traditional and Hungarian culture not only within the walls of museums, but who travelled to Transylvania, Gömör (Gemer, Slovakia), Bereg and Vas [Counties]to find its living elements, and then used the techniques, customs, songs, music and dances they had learned in the villages in their own creative work. Whether it was the architect Imre Makovecz, György Csete, the poet Sándor Csoóri, László Nagy, József Ratkó, Ferenc Buda, the art historian Pál Bánszky or the ethnographer Jolán Borbély, or Endre Füzes, their lectures, their guidance, their philosophy determined the knowledge and world view of the communities of like-minded young people.
The representatives of this subculture met first in Fadd-Dombori, in the folk-art camps organised by the KISZ (Magyar Kommunista Ifjúsági Szövetség [Hungarian Young Communist League]): they did not come from the same place, they were not equally educated, but they wanted to learn and understand the craft, to understand the language of folk art.
András Galánfi was a founding member of the Studio of Young Folk Artists, a group of artists that later became known as the Nomadic Generation. The members of the Studio met year after year at the creative camps in Tokaj, established by Pál Bánszky and József Zelnik, where they built, carved, drew, and performed songs and dances collected since their previous meeting. It was here that he made lifelong friends with Kristof Nagy, Mari Nagy, István Vidák, János Gál and others–all of them studying the old community culture and creating a new community culture.
Joint creation then took place in the woodcarving camps in Sárospatak, Miskolc, later during the construction of the creative house in Velem, and then in Zala County during the creation of the crafts house near the Gébárt lake. In Magyarlukafa, under the leadership of Bertalan Andrásfalvy and Gábor Tarjáni, the folk artists themselves rebuilt a traditional Hungarian peasant’s house which housed the Ethnographic Workshop for years. Later, he taught woodcarving at the Tiszavárkony workshop, but he also passed on his knowledge to young people at woodcarving camps in Nádudvar and Kisgyőr.
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If we look at the range of his works produced by the Galánfi workshop in recent decades, we can say that he is an artist who has experimented a lot with wood. He does not have a favourite wood species but always makes the most of the one he is working with, whether it is a tool handle or a large gate.
The small-scale works of the early years reflect the timeless forms and ornaments of the tools and utensils of subsistence farming and the objects of domestic culture.
The simpler furniture, benches, small chairs, folk bedsteads made by the peasants and shepherds and the painted chests, wicker chairs and beds made specialist, reflected a changing world of taste under community control, in which the ‘trinity’ of function–form–design could not be dissolved. First, it had to perfectly meet the requirements of the function, then its form and decoration could be shaped according to the ideas of the maker–creator. This sequence, in some cases preserved for hundreds of years, allowed for the creation of variations sometimes. András Galánfi's functional woodwork was in accordance with this order, and he composed his sculptural works with this in mind, his message being framed by this system of rules.
Every material has its own motif, so a shape and ornamentation foreign to the material results in the insignificance of the object. This is one of the fundamental principles of object-forming folk art, that needs the most explanation and exposure in the 21st century. András Galánfi became certain of the truth of this principle by exploring the motif treasure of wood, and of all the materials that appear in our folk art. The wax-coloured patterns on horn objects do not sit well on the sides of folk pottery, the figures of cross-stitch embroidery look like caricatures on an iron object.
As he progressed in his understanding of the traditions of object-making and the organic-based proportions of folk architecture, he moved increasingly confidently towards larger-scale subjects that required carpentry.
In 1973, together with sculptor Kristóf Nagy, they created their first playground using organic architectural elements, applying the formal system of folk art. This work was at once an undertaking that evoked folk-art and at the same time demanded the sculptor's intellectual depth. These works, linked to and reflecting Győző Szatyor's similar works in Pécs, created a new genre in practice: the playground with artistic–aesthetic value.
Log playground slides, climbing frames and outdoor and indoor furniture are made from logs, specifically designed to consider the properties of the wood chosen as the raw material. Here, too, he went back to the old idea that one should only interfere with nature's forms, when necessary, i.e. if a shepherd’s crook (hooked stick) or a branch for a tool handle did not require major processing, one could just cut it off and use it. From the form followed the function, if he thought about it further, he would decorate it too.
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Because of his pedagogical work, András Galánfi considered it important to learn not only the techniques, the regional characteristics of woodcraft and the ethnographic material related to the crafts, but he was also interested in how knowledge is passed on in traditional communities. Based on his experience, he considered it extremely important to have a generational step in the transmission of knowledge, which would pass on the experience of the old age to the middle generation, which in turn could reach the young. If one falls out of this line, traditional knowledge is either distorted or it disappears. In his teaching programme, he always stressed that teachers and students alike must be able to define their role, their role in the transmission and their purpose in the creative work. He also stressed that he did not want to teach just a profession, but an attitude and a vocation that is closest to the concept of faith.
In most schools, he saw that unnecessary data was being piled up as curriculum, while no one was teaching children life skills and problem-solving.
In 1992, in Nádudvar, in the vocational school established after the regime change, as the head of art education and woodwork teacher, he started to educate craftsmen with this philosophy and the experience of twenty-five years behind him. During his years in Nádudvar, the system he built from scratch became a model in our country. People from all over the world, from New Zealand to Austria, from the Netherlands to Finland, came to study the different trades (woodworking, pottery, felt-making, weaving, carpet-weaving, leatherworking). In-school and out-of-school activities, summer workshops and camps have created cohesive groups. Theory and practice were combined, as in the camps in Tokaj, not only did the students of secondary school age and older learn how to hold a chisel and a drawknife, but they listened to original Hungarian folk songs, were lectured on the culture of the Hungarians and nationalities of the Carpathian Basin and were shown that an old object is not only fit for a museum display case, but can also be a model for a tool that meets new expectations.
Twelve of András Galánfi's students have been awarded the title of Young Master of Folk Art, seven were awarded The State Award for Excellence in Folk Art, and perhaps even more importantly, he has trained half a dozen teaching colleagues over the years.
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The folk artist and sculptor, who continued to create throughout his years in Nádudvar, and who was on his own path, produced several works that reflect the vision of an artist entering a more mature age. He increasingly used figures from Hungarian, Scythian and Eastern mythology, the sun, the moon, animals from the creation stories, pagan idols and symbols from Christian culture in his works and as independent pieces.
In his series of wooden grave markers, he refers to the folk psychology of death and afterlife with simple floral motifs to more graphic images in a variety of approaches. The symbols and paraphernalia of shamanism and those used for the veneration of the ‘táltos’ [i.e. shaman] are a separate group of objects.
Its colours are inspired by natural wood, its blues, greens, yellows, browns always receded or only enhanced by contrasts, allowing the natural pattern, the texture created with chisel, sander and plane to be seen.
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He was the head of the woodcarving section of the Hajdú Bihar County Folk Art Association and later held a similar role in the Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg County Folk Art Association. As a permanent member of the jury of folk-art juries and competitions, he judged, corrected and encouraged fellow woodcarvers.
After a period at the Nádudvar School of Folk Crafts, he officially retired in 2004, which meant he was looking for other challenges. He became the Artistic Director of the Craftsmen’ Yard to be built in the Hortobágy National Park and brought 14 different craft workshops to life.
In addition to the creative manual work, he was and still is constantly involved in poetry, prose, folk poetry, song and dance: as a source of recharging, cultivation and as a performer, as material for literary evenings and readings. In other roles, as an expert and reporter–ethnographic collector, he has been involved in the production of 17 popular films on subjects and outstanding artists in the field of folklore and folk art.
He has remained loyal to Hajdúszoboszló, and he is at home in his house, which he designed and built himself, and in his workshop at the end of the garden. Together with his wife, the weaver and folk craftsman Teréz Galánfiné Schmidt, they have arranged the rooms in such a way that the old forms and furniture can be perfectly integrated into a modern house.
Man, where do you belong? –asks András Galánfi in the title of one of his solo performances. In his case, there is hardly an answer, since he is just as much at home in Vajdaság (Vojvodina, Serbia) as in Gyimes (Ghimeș, Romania), he is greeted as a familiar face in the Puszta of Karcag, but he can also feel a sense of belonging in the biggest exhibition halls of the capital, because what he does is understood everywhere.
[2016]