How else could I start writing about the painter Sándor Juhász than with Mártély. With that village lying eight kilometres north-west of Hódmezővásárhely, beside a backwater of the RIver Tisza, to which he returned regularly every summer for three decades. The place where he bought a house, created a home for himself, and, last but by no means least, where his creative career was renewed, fulfilled and rose to its peak.
It is worth writing a few sentences about this place, because there is no other Hungarian village that has been recorded so emphatically in the book of Hungarian art history as Mártély. Around 1910 the painter János Tornyai built his ‘hóttignyögöm’ [lit. I’ll suffer from this till death] house here. In the entire oeuvre of his fellow artist and friend Béla Endre, the Tisza and the floodplain occupied a privileged place, and the artist died in a levee-keeper’s house by the river. A leading figure of Hungarian Expressionism, Frigyes Frank, visited Mártély regularly for a decade in the 1930s. Jenő Barcsay as a college student, and Ferenc Medgyessy in the 1920s, during periods when they were seeking tranquillity, created their Mártély works, and a series of paintings were also produced by the ‘minor masters’ of the period, István Darvassy, Ferenc Pogány and Lajos Barkász.
It would exceed the current limits to offer even the briefest characterisation of the artists connected with this place in the post-1945 period. Only a few flashes: Sándor Juhász’s good friend, and one of Mártély’s most faithful devotees, was Emil Róbert Novotny. Once, during an encounter on the Tisza dam, he made the following confession: “This is already my tenth time in Mártély, and yet I always discover so many new things in it.” The painter Ferenc Szalay must also be mentioned, who has owned property here for three decades and, since his retirement, has become a permanent resident of Mártély, and who, alongside his creative work here, regularly organises concerts in his windmill. There are also painters who own or rent houses or holiday homes here (József Fodor, Ferenc Hézső and Erzsébet Fülöp). Most, of course, come to know and grow to love Mártély as artists invited to the artists’ retreat of the Art Foundation, and this more confined environment becomes a source of inspiration for them. The Mártély Free School of Fine Arts has, for three decades now, been educating the next generation of Mártély artists.
All this is no coincidence, since the area offers the most exciting landscape characteristics of the Great Plain: the calm waters of the backwater, the gnarled trunks of ancient willows, the floodplain clearings, and the closed formation of the riverside ribbon forests. At the same time, as a kind of counterpoint, beyond the embankment one finds the sparkling saline Great Plain, with its scattered and mostly treeless farmsteads. Nor should we forget the open-hearted, friendly and sincere people, who over decades have grown accustomed to, and fond of, the artists who pass through here. They have never regarded them as eccentrics, but as useful members of society, as people who carry out their beneficial activity not with scythes and hoes, but with brush, chalk and modelling tools.
All this explains Sándor Juhász’s repeated returns over three decades, but it does not explain the creative intensification of the last few years. By his own admission, he was deeply affected by the early death of his fellow student and friend, György Kovásznai. Of course, the human and emotional motivation provided by his wife, Erzsébet Nyírő, also played a significant role. Tradition, landscape and people had been present earlier as well, yet they had not truly inspired him to create. A shared emotional and human wavelength, trust, love and encouragement were required for the unexpected and uniquely rich blossoming of the final years of his career.
I myself first met Sándor Juhász in Mártély. I visited the artists’ colony, and it was there that we became acquainted. My first impression of his not tall, yet very well-proportioned, muscular, bronze-brown body, and his open, smiling yet resolute gaze made me think of the Greek forest god Pan. This impression was further reinforced by the finely wrought dagger he wore at his side. His deep love of nature was already evident during our first conversation. He spoke with particular affection about water birds, herons, night herons and coots, and he did not even describe the water chestnut as something that wounds the soles of the feet, but rather as an interesting element of the landscape. I involuntarily raised the question of the Autumn Exhibition, expressing my hope that he would be represented there. He lightly declined the invitation, saying that “when I have a work that belongs there, I will certainly submit it”.
Let us now become more closely acquainted with the life path of Sándor Juhász. He was born on 14 February 1934 in Pesterzsébet. His father was a railway worker and a keen hiker. (The latter clearly played a significant role in shaping the boy’s love of nature.) He often took his family on excursions. Most frequently they went hiking, in order to become as closely acquainted as possible with trees, shrubs, plants, flowers, and the animals of forest and field. After taking his school-leaving examination at the Kossuth Lajos Secondary School in Pesterzsébet, between 1952 and 1957 he studied at the College of Fine Arts, where his teachers were János Kmetty, Béla Bán, László Bencze and Géza Fónyi. He later recalled his time at the college as five happy years. Acquiring professional skills was not a difficult task for him, and friendships were also formed in the meantime. The greatest experience, however, was his introduction to art history, and within it his falling in love with the Post-Impressionists. He spoke of this as follows: “On the cobalt-blue sky of our youth, the Impressionism rediscovered by us shone like a triumphant sun, and the pagan holy trinity: Van Gogh, Gauguin and Cézanne.” Yes, they did indeed have to rediscover Impressionism, since Zhdanovite dogmatism already regarded even that as a manifestation of the declining bourgeoisie. Thus, alongside the aesthetic experience, the sweetness of the ‘forbidden fruit’ was also present. He enjoyed his freedom and his youth, the loss of which he experienced in the following way: “when I got so far as to be able to replace the furniture in my room, everything collapsed. I felt that my youth was gone!” He made this replacement of furniture possible by creating fired enamel works and etchings. As for professional organisations, he became a member of the Art Foundation, and also of the Actual Art Creative Community. Far more important than this, however, was that, according to his own self-ironic classification, during this period he was a ‘member’ of the ‘Society of Those Who Mature for Years, Who Lie About in the Shade of Spreading Trees, Who Catch Fish with a Hook on a Stick, and Who Do Not Concern Themselves with More Serious Matters’. But he was increasingly drawn to nature and drawing. He sometimes satisfied his longing for nature through wandering, and his compulsion to draw at the Pannónia Film Studio. In addition, incidentally, he also wrote poetry. And not just any poetry, either. Gábor Garay and László Nagy, as editors of ÉS, encouraged him, yet during his lifetime his poems were only published in anthologies. His independent volume of poems, entitled Károly utca (lit. Károly Street), appeared only posthumously. In the 1980s he also wrote song lyrics for Sarolta Zalatnay, Judit Szűcs and László Komár. The song from the film Áldozat (lit. Sacrifice), set to music by Gábor Presser, ‘Ó, csak a hajnal jönne már’ (lit. ‘Oh, If Only Dawn Would Come at Last’), stood at the top of the charts for weeks.
His experience of freedom also included the fact that for a time he lived in a half-finished, half-ruined church in Budapest’s Hűvösvölgy district. Fortunately, there were supportive friends at his side, György Kovásznai, Imre Veszprémi and Endre Rátkai, who, on their visits, provided him with food and drink. These varied, ‘vagabond-like’ years justified the description of him by the reviewer of his volume of poems, Júlia Kovács, as a ‘Villonesque lad’. Friendship was always important to him. His likeable personality, cheerfulness, humour and capacity for empathy facilitated the formation and durability of his human relationships.
Although this volume is intended to introduce Sándor Juhász as a painter, it is still appropriate to spend a few sentences on Károly utca (lit. Károly Street), which contains a selection of his poems, since this, too, is a part of his many talents. His poems are modern while drawing on tradition. The symbolism is at times clear, at others more complex in a surrealistic manner. The title poem Károly utca, in its intellectual content, rhythm and linguistic inventiveness, is a suggestive masterpiece, expressing a sense of wonder at our everyday world. It is very strongly tied to a place, and at the same time profoundly human and universal. With sweeping momentum, it urges us all to discover our own Károly Street.
He articulated with extraordinary force the sense of separateness that characterised the young intellectual artists belonging to the circle of friends around László Végh:
“If they raise my fever
if they set my house on fire
if four thousand winters blow towards me
if four hundred policemen shoot into me
mountains surround me, with clouds on their shoulders.”
This community did not engage directly in politics. Indirectly, however, it did so insofar as it refused to sing in unison with official cultural policy. On one occasion he read his poems at an independent evening event. The writer Alain Robbe-Grillet, who was present, greatly appreciated the poems as conveyed in a rough translation, and even undertook to translate them into French. A gentler, more lyrical mode of thought and tone was not alien to him, either. With rich imagination he articulated concern for the future and a longing for security in the poem Télire tegyetek el (lit. Put Something Away for the Winter). In much of his poetry a painterly vein can be discerned. He constructs his poems from a sequence of bold, freely associative yet intellectually charged images.
Sándor Juhász’s creative world, with the exception of the final biblical themes, was formed by his narrower and broader environment. It was the world he knew, with which he frequently encountered, which affected him through lived experience, and which he represented in his works in different ways according to the changes of the seasons or of his own inner life. As follows from the foregoing, this meant Mártély, the surrounding landscape and farmsteads, Újlak beside his home in Frankel Leó Street, as well as the Felhévíz and Óbuda districts. At times the experience of a more distant excursion or journey, to the Pilis mountains or to Slovakia, also prompted him to create. The human figure was not alien to him, either. Within the human world he was equally interested in individuality, character and the beauty of the female body. He presented this world, drawing on the classical traditions of fine art, in a traditional genre, panel paintings. It stemmed from his profound humanism that he never forgot the addressees of his works, the viewers. Of this he himself said, almost as an ars pictura: “You must look to the sky on behalf of some people… Let us say, on behalf of ten million people.”
He started from the phenomena of the visible world, yet he did not copy them with the dispassion of a mirror coating or the objectivity of a camera lens, but recreated and transformed them in accordance with his individual creative power, his attitude to life, his conception of the world and his state of mind. In this act of recreation he drew on the trinity of his college years. Above all, it is the spirit of Van Gogh, his inner restlessness and the mode of representation tending towards Expressionism that gives it form, that can be sensed as a reminiscence in some of his works, primarily in a part of his landscapes. This influence, however, despite the conscious embracing of tradition, in his case is not as dynamically forceful and tension-filled as in that of the great idol. One singled-out yet characteristic example, on account of the shared motif: Van Gogh’s The Church at Auvers vibrates with restless movement in every detail. In the solution of Sándor Juhász’s Pacsirtai templom (The Church at Pacsirta), undulating lines are also present, but here, remaining within the same conceptual sphere, they appear not in a Van Gogh-like, forceful, ‘angry’ form crashing against rock, but in the gentle merging of the waves of a sandy shore. The compositional order of the roads, and the spatial construction created by the ensemble of trees and figures, emphasise the spiritual function of the otherwise non-monumental building. As an apt analogy, one may observe that from the same bricks it is possible to build both a heavy, sombre fortress bastion and a cosy, elegant family house.
After the unavoidable Van Gogh question, we should return to the most abundant source, Mártély. Among friends and acquaintances it is fairly widespread that until as late as 1987, Sándor Juhász went to Mártély solely to relax, to live together with nature, to fish and to cook. This is essentially true, yet not entirely accurate, and requires some nuance. On the wall of his Mártély friend, István Ludányi, hangs a sensitive, finely linear, richly detailed etching entitled Virágzó körtefa (Blossoming Pear Tree), dated 1969. The solitary tree, laden with a thousand blossoms, stands on the high bank of the river Tisza, evoking a stunning spring. In the same place there are also several fresh, lively landscapes from the 1970s, watercolours of relaxed painterly quality. Likewise a product of the early Mártély period are two door-sized panel paintings painted at the request of the community centre from his own material, as a noble donation. One of his first works after purchasing the house is a painted hymn to the coexistence of human beings and nature. Everything is bathed in sunlight, the trees of the garden and the enclosed section of forest in the background, and the working human figure almost merges into the varied, fresh greens. More weighty than this all-pervading cheerfulness is Fák alatt (Under the Trees), in which the horizontal calm of the foreground highlights the anthropomorphic symbolism of the gnarled willows. Above the open earth, a space in which the gaze can soar freely, powerful brushwork and dynamic movement offer an experience in Felhők (Clouds). Clouds also play a role in Vásárhely felé (Towards Vásárhely), with their playful, varied forms. The building blocks are richly detailed, yet Mindszenti út (Mindszent Road), with its wind-swept trees and the broad, sweeping curve of the road, has the overall effect of a generous conception. The dull little railway station of Mártély, through Sándor Juhász’s brush, acquires a new quality in the work entitled Vagonok (Railway Carriages). From the mid-nineteenth century to the present, from Pettenkoffen to Ferenc Szalay, many artists have painted the Great Plain in many different ways. Even after all this, Sándor Juhász, while starting from the Van Gogh tradition, saw and showed us this distinctive Hungarian natural and settlement form in a new way.
Naturally, other settings beyond Mártély also stirred his creative imagination. Thus the Újlak church near his home, in the painting of the same title, rises like an exclamation mark, carrying the transcendence of the motif. He created the work Óbuda from large, dynamic, contiguous patches of red and yellow. Dunakorzó (Danube Promenade) is unique in its approach: early twentieth-century figures and prams are rendered with humour and a caricatural flavour.
There are works that are scarcely or not at all tied to a specific landscape or location. In Október (October), elements of the visible world merge with abstract details. The monochromy of Szeptember (September) is enriched by subtle, lurking colours. The raw force of Februári alkony (February Twilight) carries expressive value. Superb compositional order and an outpouring cascade of colour characterise A nagy szikla (The Great Rock). In the heavy, dark, inscrutable and danger-laden environment of Éjszaka (Night), the glowing, radiant light in the single window testifies to the protective warmth of home. From his immediate surroundings he also painted a number of flower bouquets. In the case of the irises, the natural form prompted a solution of baroque momentum. The divided background of Kis virágcsendélet (Small Floral Still Life) heightens the aesthetic effect of the work.
As a result of his creative ethics and artistic attitude, the human being was close to him. This applies equally to individuality, character and physical beauty. The characterful representation of young faces is a particular creative challenge, which Sándor Juhász resolved in Dávid, a festő fia (Dávid, the Painter's Son), with intimacy yet without sentimentality, and with appropriate distance. In the portrait entitled Fruzsi, the momentum of the background and the dynamism of the drapery prepare and emphasise the sensitive depiction of the face. The gentleness of the hand gesture also serves to further nuance individuality. The beauty and eroticism of the female body also affected him, and he acknowledged this as a painter. The sensuality of his nudes, however, is not that of fatal, destructive passion, but the experience of healthy corporeality and the mutual joy of love. Although female nudes also appear in the painting Teraszon (On the Terrace), in this case it is not the forceful, but the playful ensemble of lights, colours and forms born of the joy of the Homo Faber that is the most important.
For years he fought alone against the insidious illness which, after a certain point, cannot be beaten: cancer. He suffered greatly, yet he also hoped. He trusted in his vitality and in the health he believed to be unassailable. His modesty also played a role in the fact that for a long time he did not consult a doctor. When he finally consented to surgery, it was already too late.
The closing works of his creative career address the progression of his illness and the final station of human fate. Such is Sírbatétel (Félelem a haláltól) (Entombment (Fear of Death)), in which the double arch is the source of an enigmatic light. The non-individualised face of the central figure expresses, with dramatic suggestiveness, fear of the unknown realm. The mask-like quality of the face carries the same meaning as the general human message of the Jedermann (i.e. everyman) memento of medieval mystery plays. For the title of his last work submitted for exhibition he chose a biblical quotation: “And they parted his garments among them, and upon his vesture did they cast lots.” The cross and corpus rising in the background, and the angel floating at the centre, clearly allude to the source of the story. The group on the right in the foreground, sensing its extraordinary nature, reacts to the event with painful agitation. The group on the left exploits death with petty selfishness and indifference. The artist placed the emphasis on the social dimension of the Hamlet dilemma.
A characteristic feature of the mode of representation in his figurative works is that, unlike most of his landscapes, they are constructed not from small details, but from unified, summarising forms. Through this, and through the intensity of his colours, he moved, within the ‘pagan holy trinity’, towards Gauguin and Cézanne. As his works multiplied, he agreed to present them in solo exhibitions. The venues of these were Budapest, Antwerp, Hódmezővásárhely and Szeged.
A few recognitions in the final phase of his life still offered him some transient consolation and joy. In 1993 he received the highest distinction of the Vásárhely Autumn Exhibition, the Tornyai Plaque. As national recognition, the Hungarian Academy of Arts elected him among its members. Its diploma was presented to him on the same occasion, at the exhibition opening ceremony, by the distinguished writer and true friend, Tibor Gyurkovics. Also to be seen as an important event and act before the tragic end is the fact that Hungarian Television made a nearly hour-long, harrowing portrait film about him, directed by András Kisfaludy.
The five years of this creative phase is a short period, yet it is extraordinarily rich in works. It is not worth contemplating ‘what if…’, because for Sándor Juhász, life itself was the work of art. That within it he also created lasting value is a particular gain for Hungarian fine art and for all art lovers.
At the age of fifty-nine, he passed away on 10 November 1993, leaving his brush orphaned. The eternally restless one now rests forever in the Óbuda cemetery.
[2017]