I. Intersections in a historical tableau
Jenő Murádin's favourite saying: journalism can be useful, if one stops writing for the newspaper in due time. (I give the same advice to my students working for daily newspapers when I find that they need a change, a mental recharge).
He started out in an era when a career in journalism was only open to those with a good cadre file, and art history writing suffered similarly. His 1963 degree in history would have qualified him for a research position at the Történeti Intézet (Institute of History) in Cluj, but the position reserved for him was filled during his military service by someone else (a colleague from the majority population). He did not want to be a history teacher or a journalist. For three years, he lived the precarious life of a freelancer, but at least he could do what he loved best. He began by starting to seek and collect a fundamental bibliography of Transylvanian Hungarian art and artists at the Egyetemi Könyvtár (University Library). In the meantime – because he had to make a living somehow – he wrote articles about his art historical discoveries for daily and weekly newspapers. Ernő Gáll, the editor-in-chief of Korunk (Our Time), took notice of this and asked him: would he like to go to Nagybánya and show the readers of the journal the once-famous painters' colony?. With modest financial support from the editorial staff, he visited the studios in Nagybánya and inventoried the available documents about the artists' colony in the city archives. He also collected primary source material on the Ferenczy family's period in Nagybánya before legacies ended up in the rubbish, while it was still possible to visit the Ferenczy family’s rooms in András Mikola's house. Thanks to this, he later wrote a good number of studies, and from the late seventies onwards, volumes dealing with the careers of the Ferenczy family, József Klein, Jenő Maticska, and Oszkár Nagy.
After seeing his publications, three years later, the editor-in-chief of a regional daily newspaper, Igazság (Truth), asked him if he would like to work for them. He started as a press proofreader, continued as an editor, and then as an art columnist. (Notable for our parallel biographies: after graduation, I was appointed straight to Bucharest in 1968, which was a rather bad omen for me as a newlywed at the time, but ultimately, as a Székely, thanks to this I was able to settle in Cluj, a city declared closed to Hungarians. At that time, a large factory called the Nehézgépgyár (Heavy Equipment Manufactury) was founded, to which twenty thousand workers, mostly Moldavians, were moved. Those who were resettled were automatically given Cluj identification papers, and their resettlement costs were covered by the state.)
Jenő Murádin's career as a journalist, which in 1967 he expected to be short-lived, ultimately lasted a good two decades; it ended happily in 1988, when he was appointed editor-in-chief of the children's magazine Napsugár (Sunray), still a large publication at the time; it was a rare intellectual island, where he worked directly with such great authors as Sándor Kányádi, Tibor Bálint, and Sándor Fodor. By then, he had already written seven and published six monographs on art history (Klein József, Bucharest, 1977; A Barabás Miklós Céh (The Miklós Barabás Guild), Bucharest, 1978; Gy. Szabó Béla, Bucharest, 1980; A Ferenczy művészcsalád Erdélyben (The Ferenczy Artist Family in Transylvania), Bucharest, 1981; Nagy István, Bucharest, 1984; Maticska Jenő, Bucharest, 1985). (The seventh was the Gruzda-monográfia (Gruzda Monograph) of ʼ89; this was withheld for a long time due to censorship, partly because Hungarian place names were no longer allowed in our publications, and partly because the name of the painter from Zalatna was not accepted as a title).
Even a cursory glance at the list of later works reveals that his output after 1990 is many times greater than in previous years: the number of volumes exceeds forty, and the studies number in the hundreds. There is no other explanation than the historically inclined researcher's rather underappreciated working method: whenever he moves up from the foundations he has created to a modern syntheses, he returns to his carefully organised repository of data and continues his usual rhythm of organic construction.
My own life and career path actually ran parallel to that of Murádin, but there were points of contact both before and after 1990. For example, we spent a postgraduate year together in Bucharest (1972–1973), where he wrote his first monograph “before my eyes” and introduced me to the history of the Nagybánya painting school; at the request of Géza Domokos, editor-in-chief of Kriterion Könyvkiadó (Kriterion Publishing House), we both wrote for the 1977 volume Tollal, fegyverrel (With Pen, with Arms) (memorable, because it was then that he was introduced to Károly Szathmári Pap, and I to the journalism of Cluj from a hundred years earlier and to the genre of war reporting); when he was preparing the Gruzda-monográfia (Gruzda Monograph), I was able to share with him the correspondence of “the painter of winter” and Béla Jancsó ; which he reciprocated in 2003, when I was preparing for print the facsimile edition of the 1923 anthology of the first generation of Transylvanian writers after 1919, the Tizenegyek (The Eleven) (Versek, elbeszélések, tanulmányok tizenegy fiatal írótól, erdélyi művészek rajzaival (Poems, stories, essays by eleven young writers, with drawings by Transylvanian artists)), accompanied by a “twin volume”; to my great delight, he enhanced Kriterion, which had long been considered a bibliographic rarity, with a small lexicon entitled A Tizenegyek képzőművész munkatársai (The Artist-Collaborators of the Eleven).
The period spent at the editorial office of Igazság (Truth) was undoubtedly useful for establishing his career as an art historian. The rhythm of the daily newspaper accustomed him to regular work and disciplined writing practice. As an art columnist – getting to know the workshops in Cluj – he also organised exhibitions (the regular exhibitions of the editorial club were an important element of the art scene of Cluj until they were banned in 1985, along with the wider-reaching Korunk Galéria). A fortunate circumstance from a data collection perspective was that the newspaper reading room of the University Library near the editorial office offered him daily access to rich collections of 19th- and 20th-century newspapers, weeklies, and periodicals. “I put my bag on the table at Igazság,” said György Szücs, deputy director-general of the Hungarian National Gallery, recording the memorable episodes of his career, “so that the editor-in-chief [Gyula Keszthelyi – P. Cs.] could see that I was there. But he knew that I had gone to the University Library or the archives, and he overlooked it. That is how I dug myself into art history research – essentially under the influence of a great figure of Romanian art history, Professor Virgil Vătăşianu. I read everything available, starting with István Genthon's book, Az új magyar művészet története (The History of New Hungarian Art). It opened my eyes to how exciting, how interesting everything is. And also to the realisation that there is a given territory, ten thousand square kilometres larger than present-day Hungary, usually called Transylvania, including the Partium and the Banat, and a million things are left unwritten about it. I was mainly interested in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, but also, reaching back into the past, the Biedermeier.” According to art historian András Kovács, this was also the period when Murádin, “while holed up in the University Library, laid the foundations for his famous and accurate collection of data, treated with reverence in the profession, in which, in the light of contemporary periodicals and other press products, practically every news item, evaluation, and analysis regarding artistic processes that took place in the 19th and 20th centuries and was mentioned in the Transylvanian press was given a place”.
(As a contemporary historical addendum, let me add: during the perilous era of the dictatorship, the Central University Library served as a refuge for me as well. As the “Ceaușescu anniversary” January approached, I retreated here to avoid phone calls from Bucharest. Although I was only able to spend one month a year on academic research while editing the weekly newspaper, this was enough to keep alive the flame of higher intellectual standards, still promising at the time of the opening in 1968. We were not allowed to enter Hungary, or welcome our friends who had previously arrived with books and journals).
II. Time profiles of a career path
1. The original values of the homeland, the unhistorical lack of values of the university years
Jenő Murádin, a historian by training, likes to recall the past values of his native village, Harasztos (Călărași), located on the border of Székely Szék and the county and associated with Aranyosszék, as well as the origin story of his Armenian-Hungarian family. He recalls that his father, Lukács Murádin, attended the teacher training college in Nagyenyed (Aiud) together with Jenő Barcsay, who was also born a Transylvanian Armenian-Hungarian. This “Ariadne's thread” alone might have been enough to lead him to art history, but it was not the deciding factor. His father never boasted about his famous classmate, and the future art historian did not inquire about him at a time when this might have made his youthful orientation more purposeful. His interest in art history – incredible as it may sound today – was primarily sparked by his Romanian university professors. In his second year, he was transferred from the Bolyai University to Babeș-Bolyai, forcibly merged by Ceaușescu, where more than half of the subjects were taught in Romanian. The Hungarian teachers also lectured in Romanian, which was torture for both them and the students. David Prodan, a medieval historian, once told him: “You should study art history, because you are looking at the flower of history”. The unforgettable history professor, István Imreh, made the same recommendation. Although he still wrote his thesis on the Transylvanian repercussions of the Carbonari movement (Elek Csetri was his supervisor), he was actually already occupied with art history, under the influence of a great figure of Romanian art history, Professor Virgil Vătăşianu.
2) The development of the researcher personality - against the headwind
Jenő Murádin left the university with a researcher's attitude, dictating that everything he writes must be reliable and “lethally accurate”. Professor Zsigmond Jakó's admonition ("the exploration of the subject, even if it cannot be completely exhaustive, must strive for perfection”) contributed to this just as much as the enviable “positivism” of the historian-archivist Lajos Kelemen and the art historian Károly Lyka. To this was added a personal belief – not to be underestimated – that if something can be written in an accessible way, it must not be written otherwise, only accurately and legibly.
With his research and publications expanding in the 1960s and 1970s, Jenő Murádin's expertise in art history deepened. Just as a note: in the socio-political background emerged a point of reference of decisive importance: 1965 – the year of the death of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, and the beginning of the Ceaușescu era. The latter began with what seemed to be encouraging signs for a few years. From an art-historical point of view, Socialist Realism was still dominant as a desideratum, but in a relaxed form. (This is, of course, characteristic of the era, compared to the fact that, for example, in the early 1950s, albums of Western art, including works on the Impressionists, were removed from the library of the Képzőművészeti Főiskola (College of Fine Arts)). This period also saw the release and then “dark” resurgence of college students who were imprisoned for their part in the 1956 revolution (Imre Balázs, Lajos Páll, Vid Aristid Tirnován, and others).
From the death of Gheorghiu-Dej until the so-called “first cultural revolution”, till around 1971, lasted the “post-glacial warming period”. However, from the “second cultural revolution”, announced in 1974, bans became increasingly more prominent. By the end of the Ceaușescu era, things had degenerated to the point – recorded by György Szücs's on tape recorder – where “gloomy landscapes were not accepted for painting or photography exhibitions. Why would the era we are living through under the guidance of the wise leader be gloomy? Unlike in Hungary, cultural policy here was like a roller-coaster. Certainly, party leadership compromised literature and the arts without a second thought. The only important thing was to serve the system. In our country, therefore, Socialist Realism returned, albeit in a changed form, in the wake of a personality cult”.
This is the era when the notorious jury rejections were on the agenda. Of the painters in Cluj, Andor Fülöp Antal was probably ignored the most often. (He never even received a pension). At a time when the destruction of the Romanian cities was reaching staggering proportions, József Macskássy painted the demolition of the Hóstát in Cluj. In other words, the drama that this horticultural Hungarian community on the city's periphery was living through, with the demolition of their houses and the building over of their gardens. Two legs were visible in the image: the legs of a hanged man, a Hóstát farmer who had committed suicide. The title was neutral, but everyone knew what it was about, because there was – and still is – a distinctive Hóstát folk attire.
All this happened at a time when fellow Romanian artists were making artistic compromises with easy abandon, or were prioritizing their ethnographic inspiration. This was apparent in Nagybánya as well. At that time, Máramaros (Maramureș) and Avas (Oaș) themes were proliferating in the local studios. The painter is not the type – Jenő Murádin soon realised – to work only for the studio. Many were forced into temporary compromises, but later – from the beginning of the nineties – they cast it off like a coat.
The end of the Ceaușescu era saw the beginning of an exodus of Hungarian artists from Romania; alongside actors, writers, and clergymen, this was perhaps the largest in scale in our region. Most of them left in the spring of '89. They settled mainly in Hungary, but many made it to Germany, the United States, Sweden, and even Greece. It turned out, in hindsight, that they had not arrived in the world they had imagined.
3. The era of large-scale synthesis
The change of 1989-1990 finally allowed Jenő Murádin to develop fully as a creator. For a while, whilst writing his new studies and monographs, he taught art history at the Ion Andreescu Képzőművészeti Egyetem (Ion Andreescu University of Fine Arts) in Cluj (admittedly with little satisfaction in terms of student interest). Trips to Italy helped expand his knowledge (creative scholarship from the Hungarian Ministry of Culture, Rome, 1996; Klebelsberg Scholarship, Rome 2006; see: Olasz földön (On Italian Soil), Odorheiu Secuiesc, 2006). He received awards such as the Lajos Németh Prize (2001), the Medal of Merit for Hungarian Art (2002), the Sándor Szolnay Prize (Erdélyi Magyar Közművelődési Egyesület (Transylvanian Hungarian Public Culture Association), Cluj, 2009), the László Debreczeni Prize (Kelemen Lajos Műemlékvédő Társaság (Kelemen Lajos Society for the Preservation of Monuments), Cluj, 2009), the Imre Mikó Prize of the Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület (Transylvanian Museum Society), Cluj, 2009), and the János Arany Medal of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2009). The basis of these were volumes such as Nagybánya – a festőtelep művészei (Nagybánya – The Artists of the Painters' Colony), Miskolc, 1994, second edition 2001; Nagybánya száz éve (One Hundred Years of Nagybánya) (with György Szücs), Nagybánya – Miskolc, 1996; Erdélyi festőiskolák (Transylvanian Painting Schools), Bucharest – Cluj, 1997; A Mátyás-szobor és alkotója Fadrusz János (The Matthias Statue and its Creator János Fadrusz), Cluj, 2002, second edition 2008; Az aradi Szabadság-szobor (The Statue of Liberty in Arad), Cluj, 2003; Szathmári Pap Károly, Cluj, 2003; A felsőbányai művésztelep (The Felsőbánya Artists' Colony), Cluj, 2006; Szopos Sándor, Budapest, 2006; Tasso Marchini, Budapest, 2008; Szathmári Pap Károly erdélyi országgyűlési arcképcsarnoka – 1842 (Károly Szathmári Pap's Transylvanian Parliamentary Portrait Gallery – 1842), Budapest, 2008; A megsebzett szobor – elpusztult vagy megsérült erdélyi magyar emlékművek repertóriuma (The Wounded Statue – Repertory of Destroyed or Damaged Transylvanian Hungarian Monuments), Cluj, 2008; Márton Ferenc, Csíkszereda, 2009; A Barabás Miklós Céh (The Miklós Barabás Guild), Sfântu Gheorghe, 2009; Kolozsvár képzőművészete (Alkotói örökségünk a 19-20. századból) (The Fine Art of Cluj (Our Creative Heritage from the 19th-20th Centuries)), Sfântu Gheorghe, 2011; Függőhidak (Suspension Bridges), Sfântu Gheorghe, 2013.
III. Methodological procedures of the art historian
The lack of domestic research institutes after the Treaty of Trianon has periodically produced one-man enterprises from Hungarian communities beyond the borders. This topos established in the Transylvanian media landscape fits Jenő Murádin: a personality substituting for an institution. Just like Attila T. Szabó (Erdélyi Magyar Szótörténeti Tár (Transylvanian Hungarian Historical Etymological Dictionary)), Edgár Balogh (Romániai Magyar Irodalmi Lexikon (Hungarian Literary Encyclopaedia of Romania)), Dr. Károly Kós (Az erdélyi és a moldvai magyarság tárgyi néprajza (Material ethnography of Hungarians in Transylvania and Moldavia), and Zoltán Kallós (Az erdélyi és a moldvai magyarság szellemi néprajza (Intellectual ethnography of Hungarians in Transylvania and Moldavia)). The list goes on. However, the stereotype of “virtue forged from necessity” is a somewhat simplistic formulation. It does not always make virtues apparent: the work carried out regularly, with due professionalism (methodological soundness), and the articulated adherence to quality requirements.
Jenő Murádin began exploring his sources and organizing the recorded data into a card index file more than half a century ago. As regards this 15 000-strong database, I myself would emphasise relevant information. The location of the sources matters: on which public collections of national importance did the researcher base his work? But we must also take into account that for the situation of a minority, sometimes, for example, press culture plays an even more significant role than book culture.
It is only natural that Jenő Murádin reviewed the relevant material of the Kolozsvári Egyetemi Könyvtár (University Library of Cluj) (including in its old stock the collection of the Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület (Transylvanian Association of Museums)), the Kolozsvári Akadémiai Könyvtár (Academy Library of Cluj), the Marosvásárhelyi Kultúrpalota Könyvtára (Library of the Palace of Culture in Târgu Mureș), the Bukaresti Akadémiai Könyvtár (Academy Library of Bucharest), and the Máramaros Megyei (nagybányai) Múzeum Könyvtára (Library of the Maramureș County (Nagybánya) Museum). It is also natural that he then supplemented this in the National Széchényi Library. However, Jenő Murádin's bibliographic exploration extended beyond books and periodicals to the major daily newspapers of the era. No matter how time-consuming the work of looking through daily newspapers that appeared continuously for often half a century was, carrying out this work proved extremely important for the examined area and period. After all, in Transylvania, due to the lack of specialist journals, reflections on fine art appeared in the press and literary journals. At the same time, this means that what was written about artistic issues also provides information about the artistic aspects of the coexistence of the three nations of Transylvania (Hungarian, Romanian, German).
This era, spanning seven decades, is divided into two easy-to-separate historical units. The quarter-century between the two world wars (1919–1944), a fertile period for the emerging independent Transylvanian art life, and the time of the political regime change and the dictatorial social establishment, and its closing period (1945–1989). He divided each of the two eras into three chapters: a) daily information, events; b) more persistent publications, aesthetic approaches; c) independent publications, books.
Based on this: “Jenő Murádin gave voice to all those with important data and irreplaceable knowledge about Transylvanian fine art, clarified the history and artistic topography of fine art schools, workshops, art groups, movements, and colonies; he wrote about famous typographers and printing houses, lithographers and photographers, coat-of-arms painters and stone carvers, goldsmiths and graphic artists, applied artists, painters, and sculptors, about locals, those who wandered here, and our compatriots who found success elsewhere. He thus created works that approach the history of 19th- and 20th-century Transylvanian Hungarian fine art from the direction and perspective of individual creative destinies, and which focus on clarifying various – far from uninteresting – details.” (Zoltán Tibori Szabó).
Jenő Murádin ensured that we “make this image timeless” in a more comprehensive dimension of space and time. After 1990, his interest extended to fine art phenomena and creative workshops in Hungary and the Carpathian Basin as well. His 2013 synthesis entitled Függőhidak (Suspension Bridges) (also available in a Romanian version) bears witness to this most eloquently.
From the grand summaries, we can conclude first and foremost that he essentially considered, and still considers today, the building of suspension bridges of togetherness as his life's vocation. His self-professed art historian credo is: “Hungarian art is indivisible. National borders have only increased its diversity”. He always approaches the whole from a details-oriented perspective, which is why his summaries are authentic.
I had an opportunity to become personally familiar with Jenő Murádin's working method. In note 34 of the Gruzda-monográfia (Gruzda Monograph), he says that his research work and the identification of the Gruzda pictures were greatly aided by taking stock of reproductions published in the papers Vasárnapi Újság (Sunday Newspaper), Pásztortűz (Shepherd’s Flame), and Erdélyi Helikon (Transylvanian Helicon). He also records which painting was visible at which exhibition; we learn about the later fate of the works, and find out who the current owners are. For example: one version of the picture depicting the Lukács House was bought by the London vicar Chisholm. The first sentence of the volume dedicated to me on 15 September 1989 (A tél festője (The Painter of Winter), Kriterion Könyvkiadó, 1989, p. 5) is: “Now it is winter and silence…”. The rest we left unsaid.
As a press historian, I myself have dealt a lot with the periodicals between the two world wars, including Pásztortűz and Erdélyi Helikon. Yet Murádin's study in the Komp-Press publication Könyv, grafika, könyvművészet Erdélyben (1919–2011) (Book, Graphics, Book Art in Transylvania (1919–2011)) struck me with the force of surprise: the reproductions of Pásztortűz (1921–1944) alone left us with a virtual gallery of contemporary Transylvanian fine art. It seems to me as if this fine art portrait gallery was richer than the literary one. We find the explanation in Sándor Szolnay's letter to Miklós Bánffy in September 1934: “Until we can act as a body against the picture trade that is ruining us, I will call the attention of the authorities to what they owe morally to Hungarian artists, even if this will be unpleasant for some. Here I refer only to the activity of the Minerva picture department and the standards of that postcard entitled Művészeti Szalon (Art Salon). Whatever exists outside of these can simply be prosecuted by punitive legal action”.
The small lexicon entitled A Tizenegyek képzőművész munkatársai (The Artist-Collaborators of the Eleven) – edited by Murádin – starts with Ferenc Ács. Five years later, I was delighted to discover that an entire volume has grown from the entry (Ács Ferenc, Odorheiu Secuiesc, 2008). But among his research experiences, we also find examples of initial negative results leading to the unraveling of mysteries in the longer term. It turned out, from the Minerva volume published in early 2016, that one of the artist-collaborators of the Eleven, Sándor Lengyel – whose style-seeking procedures are recorded in Murádin's small lexicon – was in reality none other than Dr. Alexandru Culcer, the later Petőfi scholar.
IV. Purposefulness of research areas
Jenő Murádin's book of books – this is how art writer Zoltán Tibori Szabó characterised the synthesis published in the spring of 2012 entitled Kolozsvár képzőművészete (Alkotói örökségünk a 19-20. századból) (The Fine Art of Cluj (Our Creative Heritage from the 19th-20th Centuries)). He stated no less than that it is a work of great importance, the weight of which will only be truly proven by the coming years.
It is evident that through Jenő Murádin's studies, monographs, and collected volumes summarising more than half a century of research work, we can trace Transylvanian fine art life, creative workshops, artist groupings, art colonies, schools, and eras going back two centuries. Starting with the creators of the Biedermeier era (Miklós Barabás, Károly Szathmári Pap), continuing with sculpture work in the age of Historicism (János Fadrusz, György Zala), the Nagybánya artists' colony, and the beginnings of the Hungarian avant-garde, not forgetting the circumstances and fate of Transylvanian Hungarian monuments and memorials (A megsebzett szobor – elpusztult vagy megsérült erdélyi magyar emlékművek repertóriuma (The Wounded Statue – Repertory of Destroyed or Damaged Transylvanian Hungarian Monuments), Cluj, 2008). In the wake of his work, creations believed long lost and dormant works from private collections have come to light.
“The reader regrets,” reads Géza Szőcs's reflection, “that Jenő Murádin's scope is limited to the last two centuries – in his heart he would follow (and demand) a summarising overview at least up to the time of the Kolozsvári brothers, but he would not mind if such a clever guide accompanied him back to, say, Roman times, or to the material relics of the migratory peoples”.
[2016]