Mihály Morell was a sculptor whose career followed an unconventional trajectory. After completing his studies at the Budapest Academy in the 1930s [the Hungarian Royal Academy of Fine Arts, predecessor of today’s Hungarian University of Fine Arts], he began working at the Hunnia Film Factory [Hungary’s major state film studio before 1945 and again after nationalisation] as a film professional. This dual impulse – cinematic and fine-artistic – remained a defining force throughout his career. He was only able to embark fully on active sculptural practice in 1955, once his studio had been established, and it took another decade and a half before he appeared before the public with an autonomous sculptural body of work. At the age of sixty, in 1971, he held his first solo exhibition at the exhibition hall of the Kulturális Kapcsolatok Intézete (Institute of Cultural Relations [a state institution responsible for international cultural exchange during the socialist period]) in Budapest. This debut was followed by numerous further presentations in Budapest and in provincial cities. His most recent collection, featuring drawings and sculptural designs, was unveiled on the occasion of his 100th birthday in 2011. Alongside his sculptures, he also presented paintings informed by a distinctly surrealist mode of vision.
His sustained engagement with film work, together with his relatively late artistic start, helps to explain why he produced only a limited number of monumental public works. Between 1960 and 1987, it was primarily portraits and full-figure memorial statues that were realised – depictions of major figures of Hungarian cinema, among them Viktor Gertler [film director], Márton Keleti [film director], László Ranódy [film director and screenwriter], and István Homoki Nagy [documentary and nature-film director]. Several commentators have observed that within his small-scale sculptures lie the latent possibilities of monumental compositions capable of renewing the formulaic and clichéd idiom of Hungarian public sculpture. Originally installed in the garden of the Hunnia Film Factory, these portraits and memorial statues form a coherent group of works; alongside them, his small sculptures constitute an ensemble of striking stylistic and thematic diversity.
As the art historian László Beke explained with particular clarity in the catalogue of Morell’s solo exhibition held at the Vigadó Gallery in 1990:
“There are Morell sculptures which, in whole or in part, recall the semi-abstract or abstract sculpture of the 1950s and 1960s; others explicitly evoke Henry Moore’s reclining figures. Some appear to have been prompted by art-deco impulses, yet are scarcely distinguishable from works that are cubist, futurist, or even imbued with an ‘imperial’ tone, or from those that seem to obey a peculiar ‘new machinism’. In this sense, one might say that Mihály Morell perhaps has no single, clearly identifiable personal style, but is rather a creator who sensed the possibilities inherent in eclecticism decades ago. And yet this is not quite the case. We must not neglect the dates of the sculptures’ creation. […] Moreover, although individual works may belong to the most diverse stylistic currents, a characteristic principle of form-giving can nonetheless be observed in them. There is also a whole series of Morell sculptures – among the very best – that are unlike anything else.”
Thus, through his small bronzes and patinated plaster sculptures – such as Karcsú figura (lit. Slender Figure), Hiroshima, Rész és egész (lit. Part and Whole), Törölköző nő (lit. Woman with Towel), or A föl-földobott kő (lit. The Stone Tossed Up and Up), all created in the 1980s – Mihály Morell fashioned a sculptural universe in which a synthesis of classical sculptural ideals and avant-garde aspirations takes material form. His compositions at times appear to allude to the human figure, at others to cross into the realm of abstraction, in such a way that referential elements become secondary to the surging excitement of form: the variety of surfaces, the unexpected perforation of masses, the intense interpenetration of spaces. This emotionally rich plastic world is permeated by an excited vibration, the assertion of distorting forces, a sense of haste and agitation, a kind of desperate searching.
In his analysis of Morell’s art, the art historian István Solymár refers to a return – through ever more abstract means – to new figurative formations generated by the filtering of memory and by an emotionally charged creative imagination. The aesthetician György Theisler highlights, as the most characteristic feature of Morell’s sculpture, a duality organised through crystal-clear sculptural beings on the one hand, and through the spatial relational systems of tectonic masses on the other. These approaches and interpretations alike encourage the recognition and professional appreciation of values represented by the sculptor that have remained somewhat marginalised and insufficiently known within Hungarian art.
[2012]