József Somogyi was an indispensable figure in the fine arts of the decades following the Second World War. His public sculptures, constructive in conception yet radiating expressive energy, have become defining elements of many Hungarian towns and cities.
“Medal, plaque, relief, portrait, figure, group of figures, equestrian statues; small sculptures creating an intimate sphere and, at the other extreme, generously space-defining public monuments intended for permanence; compositions attached to buildings, or independent works finding a lasting home in an urban or natural environment; decorative sculptures imbued with political meaning yet proclaiming aesthetic autonomy – the characteristic art form of the socialist decades; worker statues, politically charged memorials caught in the traps of symbolism, fountain figures, tombs, and numerous drawings, watercolours and porcelain pieces – in short, every field, genre and form of sculpture can be found in József Somogyi’s oeuvre.”[1]
Although the post-war decades were not favourable to artistic freedom, Somogyi’s themes covered a wide spectrum. In addition to state commissions, he created historical monuments: Háború után (After the War), II. Rákóczi Ferenc emlékműve (Monument to Francis II Rákóczi), A fasizmus elleni harc hősei és a fasizmus áldozatai (Heroes of the Fight Against Fascism and Victims of Fascism)), mythological compositions (Hárfás lány (The Girl with the Harp), Három grácia (The Three Graces)), and religious sculptures (Korpusz (Corpusi, , Krisztus (Christ), Veronika kendője, (Veronica’s Veil), Kocsi Csergő Bálint református prédikátor (Bálint Csergő the Reformed Preacher), and others. “If some of these works served political purposes, they nevertheless sought to avoid direct slogans and shallow formulas, and in each case turned instead toward universal human themes.”[2]
Among sculptors, apart from his teachers Pál Pátzay and Zsigmond Kisfaludi Stróbl, Somogyi was most influenced by Henry Moore; he also counted Marino Marini among his masters, and considered Ferenc Medgyessy to be at least the equal of Maillol. He studied painting with István Réti and Vilmos Aba-Novák, but was also close to Béla Czóbel and Jenő Barcsay, whom he ranked among the greatest. “The humanist sense of structure that radiates from his paintings not only disarms but also initiates us into the mysteries of the natural world,” he said of Barcsay. In an interview he mentioned the strong impact of Pál Miháltz’s exhibition. “István Ilosvai Varga represents one branch of the Szentendre school of painting, while the lineage of Lajos Vajda and Endre Bálint is equally important to me – they embody one of the most exciting branches of twentieth-century painting. Among the younger artists, Ignác Kokas – a pupil of Aurél Bernáth who nevertheless managed to soar beyond his master – is close to me. I also appreciate the even younger Lajos Sváby,” he said. He was also drawn to the “colour world and associative thinking” of the Great Plain painters – Tornyai, Koszta, Rudnay, and later József Németh. Among foreign artists, the works of Picasso, Chagall, and Oskar Kokoschka served as lasting inspirations.
Somogyi remained sceptical about the public’s maturity in appreciating modern art. Speaking at the opening of the 1975 World Art Week, he observed that “broad sections of society still do not understand the system of symbols that defines the colours, forms, intentions, and associations of contemporary visual art.”
József Somogyi loved literature. He sculpted portraits of great Hungarian poets (Bessenyei, Vörösmarty and Petőfi), created a memorial plaque for László Nagy, and maintained personal friendships with several writers. In 1980, at the Academy of Fine Arts, he welcomed László Cs. Szabó, who had returned to Hungary after three decades abroad.[3]
He was a prolific sculptor, though his smaller bronze and terracotta pieces are often overshadowed by his widely known public monuments. His work in plaques and medals was equally significant. Realism remained constant throughout his career; he never moved toward abstraction. “I can’t help it – I’m a figurative artist,” he said in an interview. The figures in his compositions, radiating inner tension, usually stand alone – much like their real-life counterparts, solitary individuals who rose above society, such as Mednyánszky or Bartók. “His monumental sculpture gives spiritually enduring form to almost all the tragic, doomed heroes of history.”[4] Their firm character and uncompromising nature are expressed through upright posture, monumental form, and rough, rustic surface treatment. “He created tormented yet strong mothers, weighty infants, emotionally divided families – in the midst of the dull, worldly Madonna sculpture of our time – along with powerful symbolic women and vigorous, masculine animal figures, at a time when waves of sentimentality and vulgarity were washing over façades. He achieved something great: for the first time in the history of Hungarian sculpture, he made dramatic truth acceptable in the public square,” wrote Gyula Rózsa in Mozgó Világ art journal after Somogyi’s death.
The lion statues at the entrance to the Hungarian Parliament date from Somogyi’s early period and were placed in front of the building in 1948. Among his other animal sculptures, Öntelt mackó (The Conceited Bear) was realised as a public fountain decoration in a park in Dunaújváros. In the late 1960s, he briefly returned to animal subjects with Őzek (Deers) in Szeged and Gólyák (Storks) in Budapest.
His famous sculpture Martinász (The Ironworker) was created in 1953. It was originally intended for the Soroksár Steelworks, but as the client objected to the realism of the composition, it was eventually unveiled in 1960 at the end of what was then Stalin Road, also in Dunaújváros. The sculpture appeared on the city’s coat of arms between 1969 and 1991, and Somogyi received the Kossuth Prize the following year. His third public sculpture in Dunaújváros, Aratók (Harvesters), 1979) depicts two men and three women.
Among his most important works is the composition representing János Szántó Kovács. The figure of the powerful, lean peasant leader with clenched fists was erected in Hódmezővásárhely in 1965. Contemporary critics wrote:
“The gaze of János Szántó Kovács is sombre and defiant, looking upward and forward, toward the heights of the town hall and the ‘upper classes’. His chest and shoulders are sinewy and pronounced; his arms, twisted with anger, and his huge fists contract and strain with a fearsome weight. [...] The monument is a great synthesis of expressive, emotional sculpture and constructive, rational artistic intention. [...] It is an impassioned, fervent piece of sculpture. [...] The gesture itself – or rather its stillness – carries seething, formidable energy. [...] The sculptural figure is doubly expressive: restless in its surface treatment and charged with emotion in its proportions and pose.”
On the pink pedestal of the Dózsa monument in Cegléd stand two figures – the peasant leader and his soldier – flanked by two upright scythes. The work was created to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Dózsa’s birth and was unveiled in 1972 on the site traditionally associated with his famous speech. (A companion sculpture depicting Dózsa alone was installed in Kiskunfélegyháza the same year.)
Somogyi began work on his statue of Miklós Zrínyi in 1966, and the sculpture was erected two years later in Szigetvár. Contemporary critics noted a resemblance between the horse of the Szigetvár monument and the equestrian statues of Marino Marini.
The bronze Corpus in the Church of Saint Ladislaus in Hollóháza – Hungary’s northernmost settlement – is one of Somogyi’s religious sculptures. It stands in a 1960s building, displayed beside a relief by Margit Kovács.
He created several of his works in collaboration with Jenő Kerényi. Alongside Táncosok (Dancers), which was exhibited at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair, the façade sculptures of the Madách Theatre were also joint works, with Gyula Kiss contributing to their design.
In 1970 he sculpted the bronze tomb sculpture of László Mednyánszky, located in the Kerepesi Cemetery (Budapest). Together with the statue of János Szántó Kovács, it ranks among Somogyi’s major works: “in this funerary sculpture he elevated frailty, unguarded grandeur, and mortality to the monumental.”[5]
Music was also very close to József Somogyi’s heart. “He believed that painters, sculptors, and writers gain most of their intuition from sounds – not because of their abstraction, but because music can immediately convey the emotions and sensations that truly inspired the work.”[6] He particularly revered Béla Bartók, whom he saw several times at the Academy of Music. His favourite composition was The Miraculous Mandarin, which the composer described as a “one-act pantomime.”
Somogyi’s monumental statue of Béla Bartók – more than four metres high and standing on a stone block – is located near Kosztolányi Dezső Square, beside Lake Feneketlen. The composition depicts Bartók during his journey to America, at the “gateway to the New World,” with bells and cowbells hanging from the arch above.
The monument Heroes of the Fight Against Fascism and the Victims of Fascism stands in a chestnut grove (Gesztenyés kert) of Buda. The composition, made of bronze and quarried stone blocks, was created in 1985 in collaboration with József Finta, who also designed the nearby Congress Centre and Novotel Hotel. The bronze female figure holds a pussy willow branch in one hand and a burning candle in the other. At the unveiling ceremony, an actor (András Bálint) recited Miklós Radnóti’s poem Nem tudhatom (I Cannot Know). In 1992, in Ásványráró – the village of his childhood – Somogyi completed The Monument to the Victims of the Second World War, considered one of his final public sculptures, together with his portrait of writer Péter Veres.
József Somogyi created some of the most outstanding works of twentieth-century Hungarian sculpture. His path was by no means easy: “In an age when artists rarely chose their own subjects – when commissions were imposed on sculptors after weighing dozens of factors, ranging from prestige and official position to a true sense of inner affinity between the artist and the task – he created only those sculptures that had taken shape and matured within him, when, according to his own standards, the idea could truly become a sculpture. That is what makes each of his monuments authentic,” wrote Judit Aba-Novák in the catalogue of the 1996 exhibition at the Mestermű Gallery in Veszprém.
[2015]
[1] Tibor Wehner, Szárnyaló, üldögélő galamb, Vonások Somogyi József szobrászművész életművéhez, Új Művészet, 1993.
[2] Wehner, ibid., 1993.
[3] Áron Tóbiás, Egy cserép ciklámen, Színképek Somogyi Józsefről, 9 January 1993.
[4] Gyula Rózsa, Az eltemetett Somogyiról, Mozgó Világ, 1993/4.
[5] Rózsa, ibid., 1993/4.
[6] Véget nem érő küzdelem, Kritika, 1981/3.