The first page of the 1969 issue of the former Art Collector magazine features a reproduction of the work of ceramist Antal Pázmándi entitled Sárkányölő Szent György (St. George the Dragon Slayer), described as a “40 cm high ceramic figure. The stylization and coherence of the form is dissolved by a dash of colour with a fresh and dynamic line. It is a decorative work of playful movement, which can be a beautiful piece of interior design with a smooth line in a larger space.” This early, traditional ceramic object, which is linked to the period of the beginning of his career, in the light of the progressive aspirations that later unfolded, testifies to the fact that Antal Pázmándi, too, after completing his studies at the Budapesti Iparművészeti Főiskola (Budapest College of Applied Arts) in 1967, started out by making ceramic figures, in order to become actively involved in the process of radical renewal of the ceramics sector. Modern Hungarian ceramic art was born in the 20th century. Following the work of Margit Kovács, Géza Gorka and István Gádor, who laid the foundations for modern ceramics in the 20th century, the artistic activity of two highly influential college masters, Imre Schrammel and Árpád Csekovszky, led to a turn in this genre, previously described as applied art, extending it beyond functionality, decoration and appeal, towards autonomous artistic expression and expression The change was accompanied by a strong plastic form creation. Among the students of Imre Schrammel and Árpád Csekovszky, in the seventies of the last century, at the time when the symposium movement of Hungarian ceramic art was coming to fruition, Antal Pázmándi appeared among contemporaries such as Levente Thury, Gyula Kovács, László Borsódy, Győző Lőricz and László Szalai, who were on different paths. He has been steadily building up his oeuvre for almost six decades, which now represents a significant, epoch-making body of work in the fields of ceramic sculpture, ceramic exhibition sculpture, monumental ceramic sculpture in the open space and building sculpture.
The extremely talented ceramicist Antal Pázmándi was launched by an excellent master at a great, fertile artistic moment: when and where significant artistic movements were accumulating, important artistic events were maturing, and the possibility of creating epoch-making works was outlined. This fertile, expansive moment can be traced back to the last third of the 1960s, and the master can be named precisely: Árpád Csekovszky, an idealistic art teacher who raised a slew of talented students and espoused modern artistic principles. Beyond the historical, social, and political conditions of socialism, which were sometimes on the rise and sometimes on the decline, the circumstances can also be identified in the breakdown and dissolution of the rules governing the so-called applied arts, which were defined by the solid components of function, decoration, technique, and tradition. In addition to ceramics and glass, we must refer to textile art as an important field for the renewal and revitalisation of the so-called industrial art sectors and the blurring and dissolution of rigid genre boundaries. Among the aspirations and hidden motivations, the most important factor, independently of clay working and artistry, is perhaps the liberation from function, from utility, from the purpose of use and from the compulsion to decorate for its own sake, the striving for autonomy, and a strong and decisive intention to take possession of a space that is full of magical intangibles, to permeate it with objects that are saturated with content, endowed with characteristically individual characteristics and individually shaped.
An elemental desire to take possession of space and an insatiable will for plastic expression characterised Antal Pázmándi’s work even in his early, early career: it is perhaps enough to recall his pyrogranite thesis, the sculpture that depicted the drama of the hawk swooping down among the birds, which, looking back on his career, the artist says was a reflection of his interest in vibrant dynamism. The plastic phenomenon of vibrant dynamism was already present in Hungarian art at that time: tThere is ample argument and evidence to be found in the best sculptures by József Somogyi and Jenő Kerényi, bathed in expressiveness, or in the expansive works of Tibor Vilt and Erzsébet Schaár, who were creating glass sculptures at the time, exploring new and novel spatial and plastic dimensions, and in the initiatives in object formation and spatial art of the contemporary industrial design generation, with a quite different emphasis. Nor was the motif of the ceramic artistic capture of the artistic object-medium, transformed into a vibrant and dynamic medium, entirely unknown at this time: István Gádor’s ceramic structures and the building ceramics, reliefs and compositions in open space by Imre Schrammel, Árpád Csekovszky, József Garányi, János Majoros and their contemporaries were already integrated into the chapter of the history of modern Hungarian art that encompassed progressive processes as works guided or touched by the new vision. At the turn of the sixties and seventies, after a study trip to Italy during which he finally became acquainted with the latest works of modern art, and after having learned some serious lessons, Antal Pázmándi made his first large-scale ceramic sculptures, and he has not moved away from this scale in the three decades since: He has created and continues to create large-scale compositions placed in exterior spaces or organically linked to buildings, as well as ceramic sculptures, space sculptures and reliefs adapted to the spacious scale of the exhibition space. To do this, of course, he had to find the right technical conditions and develop the optimum technological processes, for which the workshops of the art colony movement, which had meanwhile found a home in Hungary, offered an ideal setting and medium. Most of Pázmándi’s works are made from fired firestone, the material and surface of which remains raw or is glazed to give it its final form. It is interesting to note that the initial restrained, often monochrome use of glazes and colours is replaced by a cavalcade of colour applications, sometimes with the use of stickers, from the 1990s onwards: the fountain sculptures of the seventies, the large-scale relief in Debrecen in 1988, the wobbling sculptures of the nineties, the building sculptures of the Ürömi út house in Budapest, the decorative fountain in the city centre of Debrecen – if we consider the colour effects, we can draw conclusions – can be judged to be compositions with completely opposite approaches. He exploits the plastic power of the puritan, unveiled and lively form, which carries materiality, or the intense, surging effects of masses and mass relations, form systems, emphasised with heightened colours. A comparison of the works and their characteristics reveals the artist’s flexibility of approach, which is sometimes encouraged or limited by the environmental conditions and the wishes and conditions imposed by the client, and which is not hindered in the creation of autonomous ceramic sculptures and reliefs.
Antal Pázmándi was initially attracted to abstract compositions with a geometric character, and then, with a turn, he moved into the world of objects and phenomena of Pop Art, creating compositions such as the sculpture of the grilled chicken, the Agip oil bottle, or the scene of the little Fiat in Vezessünk puhán (Drive Softly); works whose most characteristic feature is a sculptural demand for a clever choice of objects and shapes, a plastic expression enlivened by colour, and which, in terms of content and thought, breathe with their time. In addition to small and medium sized ceramic sculptures, Pázmándi has also completed a number of monumental commissions, most of which were awarded by competition. He has created large-scale works in the open space and on the walls and architectural elements of building exteriors and interiors, such as the decorative fountain in Gödöllő, the relief of the commercial building in the city centre of Debrecen, and the façade decoration of the Benczúr Street building in Budapest, the interior glass-ceramic sculpture of the bank in Hold Street, the rich sculpture and relief ensemble of the office building on Ürömi út, jointly commissioned with Gyula Kovács, and the Debrecen fountain, inaugurated at the turn of the millennium and grossly mutilated by the client before it was handed over. These large-scale works, placed in communal interior and exterior spaces or applied to the façades and walls of private buildings, were created in the spirit of the eclecticism of postmodernism. These works freely combine figures and abstract motifs, striking and restrained effects. Eclecticism also characterised the smaller works of the nineties, made in the spirit of an independent artistic programme: by combining different materials – metals, pieces of wood, glass – and found objects, Pázmándi created works of particular radiance. Fittings and separations, precise, systematic geometric elements – circular plates, discs, triangles, grids – and whimsical, seemingly untamable, organic stretches, create the relationships of space and mass and the form order that organises the space into a dynamic, which is animated by a world of colours organised from uniform large colour surfaces and small motifs painted as patches, pattern-like repetitions. These compositions, which convey and interpret the magic of free form creation, are a moving ensemble of painterly ceramic sculptures with an elemental effect, rich in fantasy, intensely organising the space.
Today, the golden age of ceramic art – ceramic sculpture – has come to an end: the series of monumental works by Antal Pázmándi, commissioned by the state or private collectors between 1969 and the 2010s, placed with a sense of permanence, has been interrupted. In the new millennium, as commissions gradually diminished or even ceased altogether, the artist was left with the last chance to create works in the spirit of his own programme. This artistic situation, however, is causing serious tensions, because Antal Pázmándi is such a prolific ceramic sculptor that he could present a collection of his recent work representing several independent thematic units, or he could undertake a comprehensive exhibition of his life’s work, the dimensions of which would require all the rooms of the Műcsarnok (Kunsthalle).
Pázmándi’s works, with their varied use of materials, using exclusively metallic materials in one group of works, or employing bronze casting but still retaining the dominance of ceramics overall, sometimes unfold their plastic scope with their lack of colour, sometimes with their accentuated colouring, sometimes with surface, painted and glazed motifs. Looking at this ensemble, our first conclusion is that the choice of materials, the method of working with them and the technical execution of the works are extremely diverse and exciting factors not only in the sculptural work of Antal Pázmándi, but also in his ceramic-sculptural work: His collection includes high-fired, glazed reduction firestone, as well as high-fired “kreaton” and pyrogranite compositions, or porcelain sculptures fired in a wood-fired kiln, which bring transitional colours to life, and salt-glazed works with a more raw design and a more vivid use of colour. And of course, the situation is much more complicated than that, because it is rare to find a pure, homogeneous use of materials and technical expression in his works, as the artist’s general and most frequently used method is mixed media, the exploitation of several materials, several systems, and several technical possibilities in the realisation of a single work. It can therefore be said that Antal Pázmándi is not aware of technical limits, just as he is not aware of size limits. Pázmándi solves the limitations of the dimensions dictated by the capacity of the kilns by the ingenuity of building from the elements: his works are generally systems of elements that can be dismantled and assembled, thus overcoming many transport and storage problems that cannot be ignored, and which of course require not only precise fittings, secure fastenings, and well thought-out construction, but also the elaboration of statics and balance systems, the precise elaboration of the movable or movable balance, and the planning of the paths of possible movements. The constructions, composed of hollow bodies, sharp flat slabs, alternations of solid – or seemingly solid – pseudo-masses and smooth surfaces, closed and open blocks, elements composed of lattice-like openings, composed on sensitive counterpoints, appear as cavalcade-like, difficult to see, dynamic space-organising forces, and as fantastic ensembles, inducing a moving art aura and world of effects: despite the heavy components, everything is in effortless virtual motion, and the works can be activated by physical impact into a movement that moves out and back, gradually slowing down and then fading away. And, of course, as the movement trajectories are traversed, the masses, shapes, surfaces and colours – and the work as a whole – change, inducing new and new effects, new and new spatial relationships, impressions and effects.
In a collection of works that guide us away from the world of pure figurativeness and recognizable elements of so-called reality, we encounter abstract compositions constructed from many components, impossible to define precisely, and difficult to describe in detail, in which separations and unions, separations and connections, repetitions, overlaps, and the playfulness and tension of juxtapositions, abstract, conceptual spatial events that rise above the conceptual. The abstracted work of Pázmándì never copies, never imitates, never depicts: it is always itself, always an autonomous entity strictly organised according to its own self-regulations. Looking at the works within this unity, we can contemplate the mysteries of artworks that intensely permeate the surrounding space, whose fundamental characteristic is freedom: the free creation of material and form, guided by a sense of freedom. Eclecticism is the magic word for the attempt to approach and categorise Pázmándi’s works: the self-evident evocation or subtly rewritten, mixed ‘use’ of elements from different stylistic categories, stylistic features from different periods, and the unity created despite the unheard-of wealth of motifs inspired by creative imagination. His works are the embodiment of towers, staircases, openwork, slabs, cylinders and discs, structures, smooth slates, rib-grids, circular slices and amorphous stretches, branchings and mergers of forms, bodies and planes, all composed in a somewhat organic unity, elements of different materials, found and found objects, consciously shaped and found, and incorporated into a composition. Pázmándi’s compositions are light and heavy, cheerful and sombre, playful, captivating and coldly distant.
From the analyses of Antal Pázmándi’s ceramic sculptures exhibited at exhibitions and made and presented at workshops (from the reviews and reflections written by Julianna P. Szűcs, Ferenc Vámossy, Gábor Attalai, Katalin Keserü, Orsolya Kovács, Gyula Ernyey), it can be deduced that the artist’s autonomous works are inherently sensual objectifications of thought content composed in the spirit of sculptural questioning. Perhaps Orsolya Kovács has most succinctly articulated the essential characteristics of this art-world when she said “...autonomous sculpture is consistently understood as autonomous sculpture, as something that has a spatial extension, a constructed character, a structure. It consciously uses space-forming schemata, the ensemble of which is based on a dynamic balance of different scales, factures, qualities, precisely in opposition to the schematic…” In the seventies, he composed exciting, tense but closed spatial systems of works composed of connections and collisions of motifs with a natural-artificial, regular-irregular, repetitive-random character, and then proceed to expand his plastic world with object evocative pop works, where he could and did provoke startling insights by disturbing the original meanings of the object, distorting scales and embedding them in time. From the 1990s onwards, the plastic confinement of the compositions, which again wandered in the realm of abstraction, was broken up and opened up, and the construction of elements began, the “interlocking” of the elements of the work, and in parallel with this, new materials appeared alongside ceramics and high-fired velvet: wood, paper, plastic, various metals, industrial elements and components. At the same time as incorporating these materials and elements – it is no coincidence that the artist chose the title of his 1996 exhibition at the Oak Tree Gallery to be Anyagváltás-meghatározás (The Definition of Material Change). He engaged in cutting and fitting cylinders and triangles together until arriving at a work – for Játék Annának (Anna’s Toy, 1996), by now composed of foreign materials only and no ceramics. However, all this is only a passing interlude, and as the end of the nineties approaches, Antal Pázmándi returns to his original material and form: high-fired firestone and ceramic sculpture. The “materials alien to ceramics” are receding, once again transformed into organic complementary components or counterpoints, to make room for a harmonious fusion of conceptual expressions of thought and decorative intentions.
In 2013, on the occasion of his 70th birthday, the editorial staff of the magazine Napút (Solar Path), along with many of his fellow artists, asked Antal Pázmándi, ceramist-sculptor, to summarise the guiding principles of his artistic work and to try to formulate the lessons of his career. In his memoirs, Antal Pázmándi referred to the coincidences that led him to art, that determined the course of his studies and that accompanied him throughout his career as a creator and teacher. In conclusion, with a sarcastic edge, he said, “I shape forms irresponsibly to my own taste and pleasure, and so it’s no wonder that even the dogs don’t want them. I am an art collector: I collect my work out of compulsion. Ars poetica: while I work, I wonder to myself what I can get out of a stray idea.” Well, in 2023, the art collector Antal Pázmándi set up a permanent outdoor exhibition of the most important works of his oeuvre in the terraced garden of his home at 158 Erdőalja út, on the slopes of Hármashatárhegy, Budapest. In this vast ensemble of works, works that have been reclaimed through sophisticated lending campaigns, works that have been sunk in museum storage for decades, works that have fallen into disrepair, compositions that have been deemed redundant in public spaces and incomprehensibly dismantled, and works that can be considered emblematic in the history of modern Hungarian art – like Vezessünk puhán (Let’s Drive Softly), like Próbababa (Test Doll), like the female busts – which should have been on permanent display in a prestigious public collection as key works long ago. The adventurous stories surrounding these works – as well as the offensive uneventfulness – attest to Antal Pázmándi’s innovative approach and spirit, which by far avoids the tried and tested solutions, often formulating bold or astonishing statements and creating chilling effects, and which relentlessly confronts reality. He is a ceramicist-sculptor whose abstract works, in addition to figurative works, are fascinating, going far beyond the realms of aesthetic significance, aiming for totality, exploring spatial problems, exploring exciting plastic questions, ingeniously exploiting the fantastic possibilities of ceramic material, and creating abstract works in the spirit of the unlimited and unrestricted dimensions of free form. The fans of modern Hungarian ceramics and modern Hungarian art should definitely visit the ceramic sculpture park at 158 Erdőalja út on the slopes of Hármashatárhegy, after visiting the collections of Margit Kovács in Szentendre, Géza Gorka in Verőce, István Gádor in Vác, Árpád Csekovszky in Budapest and Imre Schrammel in Szombathely, in the hope of gaining a complete, comprehensive overview of the history of art.
[2024]