Marianne Szabó is a key figure in the genre-based renewal of Hungarian textile art. In addition to textiles, she has also produced graphic works and papier-mâché sculptures. In 1974 she was awarded the second prize at the II Wall and Spatial Textile Biennale, and in 1975 she received the Munkácsy Prize [a major Hungarian state award for visual artists]. Since 2014 she has been a full member of the Section of Applied Arts and Design of the Hungarian Academy of Arts.
Marianne Szabó studied in the hand-painting and printed-textile design programme at the Iparművészeti Főiskola (Hungarian University of Arts and Design, today Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design), graduating in 1955. After leaving the college, she initially designed curtains, wall hangings and scarves produced by hand painting and stencil printing, later also employing monotype techniques. Rather than accepting the monotonous design work offered by textile factories, she chose the more flexible intellectual freedom of freelance practice.
Her first public appearance took place in 1959 at a joint exhibition with Aranka Hübner and Zsuzsa Szenes at the Műcsarnok (Kunsthalle Budapest [the country’s principal venue for contemporary art exhibitions]). In the same year she joined the newly founded Komplex Textil Stúdió, where, as one of the studio’s young textile artists, she worked within an alternative textile collective that stood in opposition to the official artistic line and – within the limits permitted by the period – prioritised constraint-free design and experimentation [a reference to the centrally regulated cultural environment of socialist Hungary].
Her exceptionally strong drawing skills and graphic sensibility are clearly traceable in her textile works as well. Her early pieces are characterised by small-scale surface segmentation reflecting the influence of her college training, followed by the repetition of larger pattern elements, a phase eventually replaced by a more unified compositional approach. Her palette is restrained and predominantly dark-toned, favouring browns, yellows, brick reds and greyish blues.
The most frequent motifs in her montage compositions are human figures, birds, small animal forms and plant motifs (branches, leaves, poppy heads, pinecones, seeds). In her planar, decoratively stylised, slightly grotesque human figures – especially her female figures – she captures fleeting moments through gesture, head position and the depiction of their surroundings (for example Eszpresszós függöny [lit. Café Curtain], Emeletes ház [lit. Apartment Building]). Her finely executed, hand-printed and hand-painted fabrics were produced in small series as individual metre goods.
Alongside textile design, she also worked on book illustrations (for example László Dobszay’s A hangok világa [lit. The World of Sounds], fairy-tale booklets and Advent calendars) and technical drawings.
From the mid-1960s onwards, her work turned towards a freer approach to form and thought, as well as towards new techniques. Her astonishingly meticulous, detail-rich drawings came to life on her painted curtains, tapestries and screens, where it is precisely the deliberately unfinished areas that draw the viewer’s attention.
It was at this time that winged creatures endowed with anthropomorphic qualities first appeared in her oeuvre – angels, butterflies, birds and sirens. Although all of them are capable of flight, they are nevertheless unable to soar freely; something binds them to the earthly world. These figures, imbued with a subdued, melancholic tone, represent souls caught between two planes of existence, longing for and awaiting transformation (for example Lepke [lit. Butterfly], 1964; Szirén [lit. Siren], 1969). The theme of the wing, flight and soaring recurs repeatedly in her later work – now not only in painted but also in sculptural pieces – whether as a critique of the era’s early earthbound mentality (Köpeny [lit. Cloak], 1974), in the fairy-tale-like minitextile Kiskabát [lit. Little Coat], 1975, or as an autonomous form enclosed within a wooden frame (Szárny [lit. Wing], 1978).
Alongside her earlier works, the introduction of crochet and embroidery – techniques she had previously employed almost as a matter of routine – into the field of applied art opened up new modes of expression. The combined use of light, airy traditional handcraft techniques and rustic materials (for example crocheting with hemp twine, embroidery on sackcloth) produced an unusual decorative effect while simultaneously evoking a sense of nostalgia.
Her wall works could be created entirely using crocheted techniques (Kert III. [lit. Garden III], 1967), or function as pierced, airy supports for individual figures (Angyal [lit. Angel], 1969). In her later sculptural works, however, these techniques acquired new meaning as veils of memory from the past (Pókhálós [lit. Cobwebbed], 1973; Emlék [lit. Memory], 1974). Her embroideries appeared primarily on more rustic wall pieces, offering, as it were, a catalogue of diverse embroidery techniques (Kert II. [lit. Garden II], 1966). Their more vivid colours, playfulness, assured technical command and unconventional formulations had a striking impact.
She presented these new works in 1968 at her first solo exhibition at the Csók Gallery, and subsequently at the highly influential Textil-Falikép 68 (lit. Textile-Wall Picture 68) exhibition held at the Ernst Museum, Budapest. The Textile-Wall Picture exhibition – following the pioneering work of Marianne Szabó and her contemporaries – represented the first major step towards the renewal of Hungarian textile art, making evident the crossing of the previously rigid boundaries between applied and fine art. Textile thus emerged from the background, from its subordinate, merely complementary role, and beyond – or instead of – decoration, its primary function became self-expression and the communication of ideas.
In the early 1970s, the artist still advanced largely in parallel with her peers. She engaged with the current issues of textile art, initially exploring structures, then developing an interest in textiles breaking out of the plane and in spatial compositions, gradually conquering space with her works. Angel is composed of two layers; in Butterfly two planes are interconnected, while in Triptichon (lit. Triptych) she progressed from classical weaving to the play of freely hanging threads. Her felt wall works depicting plastic, human-faced celestial bodies and hybrid creatures were executed through embossing, stitching and gluing (Álmos Nap [lit. Sleepy Sun], 1974; Hold [lit. Moon], 1974; Szirén [lit. Siren], 1974; Három angyal [lit. Three Angels], 1976).
With Pad (lit. Bench, 1972), she moved decisively away for the first time from the flat plane of textile. On a bench set within a niche overgrown with plants sits a life-sized solitary female figure. Its scale, the unfinished face, the restrained blue tonality of the entire composition, and its immobility suspend time, thereby evoking the duality of timelessness and transience. In place of idyllic calm, the work conveys unease and solitude; instead of an individualised face, an arbitrarily interchangeable figure appears, while the cloak restraining the feather-covered body suggests a surrender to fate. The piece articulates simultaneously the questions of life and passing, of being and non-being.
Mese (lit. Tale), shown at the Hungarian textile art exhibition in Madrid, is a related work: from a slit in a vast felt background a young girl steps forward. The synthesis of her spatial works – and of the techniques she had employed up to that point – was the monumental Történet (lit. Story, also known as Életút [lit. Life Path]), created in 1974. From a 24-metre-long jute background installed spirally in space emerge figures symbolising the stages of female existence: the little girl, the young woman, the mother of many children, the elderly woman, the dead, and the being beyond earthly life. The choice of theme, the precisely realised life-sized textile sculptures, the background with sections that either fall naturally or are carefully worked, and the subtle gestures profoundly affect the viewer, almost drawing them into the space itself. The enigmatic formulation of post-mortem existence does not constrain the imagination but invites further reflection. A distinctive feature of the work is that it constructs the narrative from right to left – that is, in the opposite direction to the conventional order.
In the works of the second half of the decade, the emergence of the new genre and object-oriented approach of the minitextile, together with the magical, mythical world of the Néprajzi Múzeum’s (Museum of Ethnography, Budapest) exhibition on Peru, left a decisive imprint. The gentle playfulness and fairy-tale quality that could be condensed into small-scale objects, into minitextiles, reappeared among her themes – for example in Gumó (lit. Knot), 1975, formed from a ball of yarn with an opened, woven surface; in the winged Kiskabát (lit. Little Coat), 1975; or in the half-pair of Kesztyű (lit. Glove), 1976, endowed with tiny, watchful eyes. This fairy-tale magical force also became the guiding thread of the Dobozok (lit. Boxes) series.
Inspired by the once religious, now museum objects of the Inca exhibition, she created enigmatic, pseudo-cultic objects enclosed in boxes. Her earliest pieces, Varázsszeres zacskó (lit. Magic Pouch) and Zanza (1978), still appeared closer to reproductions. In the works entitled Varázsigék (lit. Magic Spells) and Rigmusok (lit. Rhymes), she sought to translate and reinterpret, according to her own vision, the decorative quality of the khipu, the Inca system of knotted cords.
The loss of function of former cult objects also evoked for her the potential loss of function of the objects of living religions; consequently, she enclosed in boxes her textile dolls evoking the icon of the Virgin Mary as Mother of God, together with their offerings (Kegyhely [lit. Shrine], 1976), and, as a counterpoint, dolls associated with occult rituals (Bábuk mágikus gyilkosságokhoz [lit. Dolls for Magical Killings], 1976). Alongside religious artefacts, she also boxed profane objects, the paraphernalia of individual existence. Old and found objects, faded roses, abandoned weaving, tangled coloured yarns, neatly arranged scraps of fabric (Cobwebbed, 1973; Szalagok [lit. Ribbons], 1977; Nosztalgia [lit. Nostalgia], 1978; Hagyaték [lit. Legacy], 1977; Maradékok [lit. Remnants], 1978) became symbols of forgetting. The boxes preserve memories of the distant past for future generations who no longer know the original stories of the objects, yet still retain something of that past. The series of unidentified cult objects presents the peculiar artefacts of an imagined religion, composed of ribbons, feathers and beads (Kultikus tárgyak [lit. Cult Objects], 1978).
From the mid-1960s until the political transition of 1989–90, she benefited from the so-called “two-per-mille decree”, which required two thousandths of the construction costs of public buildings to be spent on artworks. As a result, she produced works for approximately thirty hotels, resorts, restaurants and community centres. Without claiming completeness, these included commissions for the Halászbástya Restaurant in Budapest, the Hotel Duna Intercontinental and the Taverna Hotel, the Aqua Hotel and the SZOT holiday resort in Hévíz, the Ministry of the Interior holiday resort in Dobogókő, the Borostyán Hotel in Sárospatak, and the Avar Hotel in Mátrafüred.
In addition to small- and large-scale wall works executed in painted, printed, embroidered and embossed felt, quilt and arax techniques, she also produced metre goods (curtains, canopies) and papier-mâché figures in response to commissions from architects and interior designers. Her largest wall work was the frieze created for the Council of Ministers’ holiday resort in Balatonszemes, measuring 130 × 6,200 (!) cm.
From the 1980s onwards, abandoning textile altogether, she worked exclusively with papier-mâché, creating puppets of varying sizes, as well as birds and angels. Her most ambitious works, life-sized paper sculptures depicting four Hungarian and four Turkish warriors, were made for the Flóra Hotel in Eger in 1988. Around the turn of the millennium, figures previously depicted in her wall works – her transitional beings and human figures – also came “to life” in three-dimensional, life-sized form (Szirén [lit. Siren], 1999; Angyal [lit. Angel], 1999; Babák [lit. Dolls], 1998–2000; Marionett [lit. Marionette], 2000). These paper figures, dressed in colourful garments, are characterised by meticulously crafted, finely drawn, serene doll-like faces.
[2016]