In the domains of small-scale sculpture, exhibition sculpture, spatial design, medallic art, and monumental sculpture, Mária Lugossy, sculptor, has produced work of significant importance, distinguished by a characteristically individual style that synthesises the lessons of prominent artistic currents of her time. Beyond the traditional branches of sculpture, at the outset of her career, she worked as a creator of innovative goldsmithing, and for decades she pursued glass art and glass sculpture. Her works have not only assumed prominence in the recent history of Hungarian art but have also garnered prestigious professional recognition on the international stage, in Europe and across the Atlantic.
1970s
Lugossy’s artistic career in the mid-1970s began with metalwork: following her studies in the metalworking design programme at the Hungarian College of Applied Arts, she initially designed and executed clocks – and clock sculptures for communal buildings – as well as jewellery. As the art historian Péter Kovács observed, these pieces were realised as “weighty works of prehistoric elegance,” simultaneously embodying sensuality and sacrality. Moving away from metalwork, steel, copper, glass, and plexiglass became central materials for Lugossy, through which she crafted autonomous sculptural compositions whose gleaming surfaces, precise execution, and geometrically reduced forms based on elementary shapes and spatial volumes generated their sculptural aura. This material use and technical approach characterised the realm of her medallic sculptures, which played a significant role in the material, technical, and conceptual renewal of Hungarian medallic art. The 1981 installation Gyorsuló tér (Accelerating Space) at the Dorottya Gallery also indicated her pursuit of sculptural explorations beyond the dimensions accessible through classical materials and techniques. Regarding this work, art historian Lajos Németh noted that “Lugossy’s great fascination is with space, time, and motion. She seeks to symbolise and fix, in sculptural form, the moment of their interpenetration and fusion.” These endeavours assumed tangible sculptural form at a time when Hungarian sculpture largely remained constrained by traditional sculptural genres, often preoccupied with narratives embedded in conventional materials and, at best, repetitive use of established symbols and signs.
1980s
In the 1980s, new materials and material combinations appeared in her works: mercury, as well as the pairing of glass and bronze. She integrated geometric order and emphasised structural elements, while retaining – or amplifying – the effects derived from the transparency and subtly filtered light of glass, which were supplanted by irregular organic forms evocative of natural phenomena and geological structures. The figures and faces emerging from the surfaces and layers of these material blocks, lens formations, or organic inclusions opened the thematic scope of Lugossy’s work to cosmic dimensions, exploring fundamental questions of existence and the relationships of space and time embedded in material. Contrary to the tendency observable in much contemporary Hungarian sculpture – in which artistic expression often shifts from naturalistic, figurative representation to non-figurative abstraction – Lugossy returned from abstraction to the methods of human representation. Her works of the 1980s and 1990s, composed of glass and bronze, concentrate the sense of the infinity of space and time and are imbued with profound conceptual content, posing questions about fundamental aspects and inscrutable mysteries of existence. Art historian Márta Kovalovszky, in her comprehensive study for Lugossy’s 2011 retrospective exhibition catalogue, noted: “The idea of inclusion continued in the works in which she paired glass with bronze. The enclosing shell remains glass, now containing bronze forms. The dark core of the composition is visible through the glass block, eternally enclosed within the dimensions of the glass space, suspended motionlessly, immersed in the transparent medium. From the late 1980s, this fundamentally sculptural approach was complemented by the endeavour to give a sculptural expression to human destiny and the problems of history. The sculptor, who previously discovered the genesis and decay of the pre-human world in the properties and formal richness of matter, now explored the dramatic struggles of human destiny and history in compositions combining glass and bronze.”
1990s
As one of the significant works in her exploration of bodies embedded within blocks and lens-like organic forms, and in her use of black glass in conjunction with bronze, Mária Lugossy in 1989 prepared a design for the 1956 memorial at Parcel 301 of the Rákoskeresztúr public cemetery. While this project could not be realised on a monumental scale, it paved the way from the 1990s onwards for several large-scale public compositions, primarily serving commemorative functions. In terms of material choice, compositional placement, and the application – or creation – of symbolic motifs, these works represented an innovative approach unprecedented in Hungarian memorial sculpture. Notable examples include the World War II and 1956 memorial in Székesfehérvár, the monument to the victims of World War II in Veszprém, the Holocaust memorial in Tata, and the 1956 memorial at Kossuth Lajos Square in Budapest, recently removed from its original site. Alongside these monumental works, the artist continued to develop her exhibition sculptures, reflecting on which in 2010 she stated:
“In 2004, I organised a retrospective titled Jégkorszak (Ice Age) across three rooms in the left wing of the Műcsarnok (Kunsthalle). The first room presented Genesis: Edenic states untouched by humans, in turquoise. In the second room, the works turned black, representing human body parts on vast black surfaces. The third room displayed the silent, deserted rocks rising towards the sky, the quiet after humanity. These three periods characterise my activity to date.”
Tragically, this three-phase trajectory was brought to an untimely conclusion in 2012 by a sudden and fatal illness. Nevertheless, her monumental compositions in Hungarian public spaces and the works held in prestigious domestic and international public and private collections – reflecting the interplay of sculpture and glass art and the progressive tendencies of the last third of the twentieth century and the first decade of the new millennium – document the work of an inventive artist, who employed materials and techniques with virtuosity, articulated the tensions and dramas of her era and humanity, and conveyed profound emotion. These works remain enduring, authentic messages for future generations.
[2015]