Endre Kusztos ranks among the most significant figures of Hungarian visual artists originating from Székelyföld [Székely Land – a historical and cultural region in eastern Transylvania, today part of Romania, with a predominantly Hungarian-speaking population]. A defining feature of his style is a philosophical depth expressed through the simplicity and austerity of his works, combined with a universal message that responds both to the course of Hungarian history and to the timeless questions of human existence. This vision finds expression through the distinctive formal language of his native land.
His talent revealed itself early on, yet his parents did not wish him to pursue a career as a visual artist; instead, they intended him for a commercial profession. The start of his artistic studies was further delayed by compulsory military service. Around this time, he struck up a friendship with Béla Gy. Szabó [Hungarian graphic artist and woodcut printmaker], who encouraged him to show his drawings to Gyula László [archaeologist, historian and university professor], then teaching at the university in Cluj-Napoca [former Kolozsvár, historic Transylvanian city, cultural centre of Hungarians, Romanians, and Central European heritage]. The professor took a liking to the young man’s graphics and supported his artistic aspirations: “What these drawings lack is what can be learned – and what they possess is precisely what cannot be learned,” he remarked. From that point on, Kusztos adhered unwaveringly to the artistic path. (He next encountered Gyula László only much later, as a mature artist, at his exhibition held in 1972 at the Magyar Nemzeti Galéria [Hungarian National Gallery].)
The distinctive toolkit of Endre Kusztos’s art took shape through many years of sustained work. In his early period he was influenced by the art of László and László Mednyánszky, later by the works of Pál Szinyei Merse and Károly Ferenczy. Throughout, however, he felt closest to the art of István Nagy and Béla Gy. Szabó. At the same time, his oeuvre also bears the imprint of the nature-oriented tradition associated with the names of József Koszta and István Thorma – a lineage rooted in the depiction of the Great Hungarian Plain and its characteristic forms.
Critical reception has generally tended to identify the influence of István Nagy in Kusztos’s charcoal drawings. Critic and art historian György Beke points out that Kusztos, “through István Nagy, feels an affinity with Gyula Kajári from Hódmezővásárhely [Hungarian painter associated with the Great Plain school], who depicts houses and drying trees. A recent appraisal of Kusztos mentions Csontváry [Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka – Hungarian painter, a singular figure of late 19th- and early 20th-century art]. […] It is true that he too strives to turn trees into symbols, yet in his pictures even felled trees do not break away from nature; he does not abstract them to the same degree as Csontváry does. Rather, it is the woodcuts of Béla Gy. Szabó that stand closest to him.” [1]
Kusztos’s art is characteristically Hungarian; the atmosphere of twentieth-century national history permeates his images. Born six years after the secession of Transylvania [the territorial changes following the Treaty of Trianon in 1920], he was compelled to live his life as a member of a minority in his own homeland, Székely Land. “In his village scenes, in trees with lopped branches clinging to rock faces, he creates symbols of minority existence.” [2] When he occasionally travelled to Budapest, he experienced first-hand the final days of the Second World War, as well as the events of the 1956 Revolution [the nationwide anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary]. His sketches of the toppled Stalin statue were hidden by his wife for a long time.
In his early period, the artist shaped his compositions from what he himself described as “the duality of modern architectural image-construction and archaic stylisation.” [3] At this stage, his work was characterised by village scenes imbued with a sense of calm, oil paintings depicting small houses, and masterly portraits executed with only a few lines – one of his oil paintings portrays a young Székely girl in traditional costume seated at a piano. Later, his interest increasingly turned towards the depiction of the natural environment: trees, or landscapes shaped by human cultivation. “He has a particular sensitivity for capturing major transformations shaped by natural forces,” observed Pál M. Kiss, his former instructor at the college in Târgu Mureș [Hungarian: Marosvásárhely, Transylvanian city with strong Hungarian cultural traditions].
The trees he depicted came to symbolise the tragedies of his own life – its “breaks and contortions”. At the same time, he sought to render, through his distinctive system of symbols, what happens around us and to us – human destiny itself. “Here, in these broken trees, there is a whole twentieth century. The Second World War and its consequences,” he remarked in one of his interviews. His stylised natural forms reflect the struggle under the weight of existence, the solitude of the individual, and alienation; yet within them, the germ of resistance and hope is also present.
Kusztos became acquainted with Chinese visual art – in which mysterious landscapes, trees and vegetation often suggest human forms – through the writings of Gyula László. He believed that nature offered the most direct means of expressing his thoughts. As he studied the forms of trees, he discerned ever more unusual shapes; a hollowed tree trunk he encountered in 1986, for instance, reminded him of a Gothic pointed arch. From that point on, this motif appeared frequently in his work, often incorporated into his drawings, for he believed that through this peculiar form the power of religion and of his own faith manifested itself in nature. Thereafter, he consciously sought out the pointed-arch form in broken, hollowed trees.
Throughout his career, Kusztos consistently strove to convey his message in the simplest possible manner. His formal language is markedly puritanical, free of all superfluous ornamentation and embellishment; his compositions are at times reduced to the extreme and even dispense with perspective. Yet he never crosses into non-figurative representation, although his works occasionally recall the abstract expressionism and gestural abstraction of the 1950s and 1960s. When asked whether the demand for recognisable depiction is legitimate, he replied: “I once discussed this with Marcell Benedek [Hungarian literary historian and critic]. He said that Petőfi’s poetry is the highest form of poetry, yet it also satisfies the simplest literary expectations. That is what I would like to achieve in drawing.” [4] Alongside his approach to form, he adheres to this aim in his handling of colour as well, employing numerous shades of black and grey in his works.
“I realised that I can express myself through black and white alone – indeed, that I can convey even more to the viewer, and more forcefully, than through colours. I began to concern myself with trees, with the destinies of trees, and it gradually became clear to me that they are capable of expressing universal ideas. The fate of a tree resembles human fate: every break causes pain; we may blossom, bear fruit, or wither and perish.” [5]
Géza Páskándi [Hungarian writer, essayist and dramatist] wrote the following about Kusztos’s handling of colour: “Imagine a palette covered entirely with dabs of black paint. The charcoal draughtsman – Endre Kusztos – holds it in the same way (Hamlet with the skull!), as if these were garish colours. He ponders just the same: which black should he reach for? He steps back in the same way, mixes in the same way… Yes: the entire arsenal is there, in Darkness. In charcoal, in graphite. I had a colourful dream last night, I say – I saw charcoal drawings. Kusztos’s.” Kusztos’s charcoal drawings testify that he is a graphic artist ‘through and through’, capable of translating the drama unfolding in nature into visual form by setting it in parallel with human destiny.
The most important source of inspiration for Kusztos’s images is his immediate homeland: the Sóvidék [Salt Region – an area of central Székely Land known for its salt deposits], the valley of the Küküllő rivers, Szováta [Romanian: Sovata], where he lived for a long time, his birthplace Makfalva [Romanian: Mărculeni] on the middle course of the Kis-Küküllő [Romanian: Târnava Mică], or Korond [Romanian: Corund]. The forests, fields and salt hills of the region; the “world of the mountains, lightning-struck fir trees, winding forest roads, gentle sand dunes” [6]; those wild landscapes that inspired the Székely folk ballads – all left a deep imprint on his art. Nor is his native village far from Bözödújfalu [Romanian: Bezidu Nou], which was flooded and destroyed during the Ceaușescu era [the authoritarian socialist regime in Romania, 1965–1989].
These landscapes, and the forests – later the individual trees – that sprang from them, were shaped by Endre Kusztos in his large-scale, tension-filled charcoal drawings and ink works. “I am stirred when, for example, a tree is cut down before my very eyes. I realise that nature itself is not eternal or immutable. If the tree dies before me. Does it die? Never entirely, never all at once. On the felled trunk, even on the trunk sawn into pieces, buds may still burst, leaves may still unfold. Even after its lost battle with the axe, the tree does not surrender!” – he says in one of his interviews.
Abandoned mountain roads coated in mud, ridgelines, gullies, fir trees growing from rock faces, trees with upturned roots still clutching the soil or already collapsing to the ground – all these convey the human being’s constant struggle for existence (which is, in truth, hopeless). Through the depiction of seemingly ordinary natural forms, Kusztos draws attention to the insignificance of human life and to the proximity of transience and destruction.
This purified art bears witness to a high degree of self-knowledge. “For a thought to draw its form of appearance to itself with such commanding force, it must be very clear and unambiguous. And this depends on how deeply the artist has come to know himself – the determining inclinations of his constitution and character, and the nature of his talent.” [7]
Parallels may be drawn in several respects between the art and the “spiritual disposition” of Endre Kusztos and that of István Nagy [Hungarian painter, one of the most important Transylvanian masters of early 20th-century Hungarian art]. In Nagy’s works, one can already discern that tenacious, robust, life-affirming yet sombre, brooding, at times almost tragic visual mentality that is also characteristic of Kusztos. His images are simple and dark, yet at the same time pure and dramatic. In the works of István Nagy, who hailed from Csíkmindszent [Romanian: Misentea, village in Székely Land, near Kusztos’s native region], natural motifs likewise carry symbolic meaning. “For Endre Kusztos, István Nagy’s colour pastels, black pastels and charcoal drawings may well have provided a secure point of departure,” wrote István Solymár in the catalogue of the exhibition held at the Hungarian National Gallery in 1972. Ferenc Sántha [Hungarian writer and public intellectual], however, cautioned against drawing direct stylistic or biographical comparisons between the two artists in his opening address:
“Seeking examples and masters, teachers, in these drawings is neither appropriate nor fruitful. The formal traits that point to predecessors are merely shared signs of inspiration for an ambitious undertaking. They are surpassed by the inimitable reality of personality. What, in this sovereign art, points to the common and the similar is nothing other than an identical sense of care and responsibility. This, in turn, is nourished by human dignity and humility, within which lies the homeland that sets one on one’s path, the smaller community – the community of indestructible strength – the world and spirit of Transylvania. In the enduring validity of Endre Kusztos’s art, it is the eidos of this land that speaks, enriching harmony with its own distinct voice. The dignified force of this hard and rigorous component, ever striving towards the whole, towards completeness, also exemplifies that one can undertake the greatest ambitions only if the artist continually draws and renews his strength from the soil of his own home.” [8]
Following his exhibition at the Hungarian National Gallery, Kusztos did not have another major exhibition in the Hungarian capital until 1990. From 1976 onwards, however, a permanent exhibition of his work was opened in his native village, Makfalva. After the political transition of 1989–90 [the peaceful collapse of the socialist one-party system in Hungary], he travelled frequently to Hungary and took an active part in the Hungarian art scene, yet his loyalty to Székely Land remained unbroken until the end of his life.
Kusztos Endre was never abandoned by his humanism, open-heartedness, sincerity, and fundamentally optimistic outlook on the world, despite the fact that over the course of his long life he had to confront numerous personal tragedies. He lost his wife in 1985, and his son died young as a result of a severe heart condition. These losses were subsequently transposed into his works. This duality of character – the figure of a man struggling under the weight of blows dealt by fate, yet at the same time life-loving and playfully inclined – also emerges from a poem written in his old age:
And: I can no longer bow my head,
My son signals, and all doubt dies away,
Here comes my Prince Antantenus,
On the underground, gliding lightly on tears. [9]
[2015]
[1] György Beke: Erdélyi sziklák, fák, sorsok – Kusztos Endre víziójában (lit. Transylvanian Rocks, Trees, and Fates – In the Vision of Endre Kusztos). Forrás, 1987/5.
[2] Jenő Murádin
[3] As written by László Szatmári in connection with Kusztos’s 1972 exhibition at the Hungarian National Gallery
[4] Reggeli Délvilág, 23 August 1995
[5] Székelyföld, October 1997
[6] Láttuk, hallottuk, 14 October 1972
[7] Excerpt from Ferenc Sántha’s opening address
[8] Excerpt from Ferenc Sántha’s opening address, ÉS, 4 November 1972
[9] Endre Kusztos, Tiszatáj, 1991/1