Beginnings

The beginnings of György Szemadám’s art of painting were profoundly influenced by the consistent, uncompromising human and artistic attitude of Erzsébet Vaszkó (1902–1986), who, after 1949 (the year when Socialist Realism became the official art form), did not present any works in public again until the early 1960s. Although striving for abstraction, Vaszkó always started from direct visual experience, and her art never became completely non-figurative. This connection is most evident in Szemadám’s early works. One example of this analytical thought process, starting from perception, is the drawing series made in connection with Egy talált tárgy (A found object), and the abstract painting created from it, Sárga kompozíció (Yellow composition). Yet the creative attitude of starting from nature and visual perception has remained characteristic of Szemadám’s art to this day.

Alongside Erzsébet Vaszkó, the work of Endre Bálint, Jenő Barcsay and Dezső Korniss also influenced Szemadám’s early works. Thus, the composition Téli táj (Winter landscape) evokes Barcsay, the painting Bogárkirály (King Bug) recalls Korniss, while the iconic quality of Ifjúkori önarckép (Self-portrait as a youth) carries the legacy of Lajos Vajda. Naturally, the painter filtered all these experiences through his own vision, developing them with his particular means of expression. At the same time, he deliberately made those features recognisable that tied him to his intellectual predecessors.

The Neo-avant-garde Years

György Szemadám found an adequate field for his zoological interests when he took a position at the Budapest Zoo and Botanical Garden, where he worked between 1967 and 1975, first as a keeper and later as head keeper of large animals. The zoo could also be interpreted as a synonym for Hungarian reality at the time, as several of the outcasts of the regime found employment there. Some of Szemadám’s works from these years indicate his attachment to big cats, for example the oil paintings Tigrisszem (Tiger Eye) from 1971 and Tigrisfej I–II. (Tiger Head I–II.).

From 1969 onwards Szemadám exhibited continuously, but naturally he was not regarded as part of the official art world; rather, he was known as one of the “enfant terribles” of the avant-garde. By the late 1960s he had become a leading figure among those young avant-garde artists who organised themselves into groups and advanced by their own efforts. In the first half of the 1970s he was a participant and organiser of several happenings and performances.

In these years, group exhibitions were almost the only form of public appearance available for avant-garde artists. Among the alternative artistic associations and exhibiting communities were the groups Iparterv, Szürenon and No 1.

The most memorable and notorious exhibition of the No 1 group was organised by Szemadám himself: the “work presentation” held between 8–11 May 1971 in the lion’s den of the Budapest Zoo and Botanical Garden. The so-called “lion’s den,” i.e. an unused room inside the artificial rock, was completely unsuitable for hosting an exhibition, yet this contradictory situation only underlined the fact that the participants were outside the official art structures. Outstanding art historians supported the group, among them János Frank, who curated their first exhibition, and Ottó Mezei, who opened all three of their 1971 exhibition.

Another emblematic scene of alternative art during this period was the chapel in Balatonboglár, which between 1970 and 1973 became the most important exhibition space for unofficial, so-called underground art. György Szemadám was naturally present here as well, and in 1973 he carried out the memorable Azonosulási kísérlet (Identification Experiment).

His action of undressing illustrated the process of exposure, while simultaneously reading out new layers of information about himself (personal data, descriptions, critiques), eventually showing his naked self and thereby becoming ever more vulnerable. The action also contained several symbols constantly present in Szemadám’s art. One was the birdcage symbolising confinement, which later, through the presence of birds, became the counterpoint of freedom. This performance demonstrates the place of the underground artist in society at the time, as well as the variations of a young creator, incapable of compromise, in his search for a path and possibilities of asserting himself. In this complex performance, Szemadám was at once the circus beast and the tamer, the rope-descending acrobat, the knife-thrower, and the entertainer drawing his own shadow. He was not only the performer of this complex spectacle, but also its spectator, commentator and documenter.

The photographic documentation of the performance was made by László Haris, with whom Szemadám frequently collaborated. Haris took the documentary photographs of almost all of Szemadám’s actions and performances (for example Zenei depressziók szabadon – Harc a nyolcórás zeneidőért [lit. Musical Depressions Freely – Battle for Eight-Hour Music Time], an open-air musical happening, 1972; Égő zsiráf akció [lit. Burning Giraffe Action], 1973; Utcai akció – egy becsomagolt, kitömött jávorszarvas „elvesztése” [lit. Street Action – the “Loss” of a Wrapped, Stuffed Moose]; Helyzetgyakorlatok [Situation Exercises], 1974). Several joint actions mark the close friendship and working relationship between the two of them, later joined by art historian Ottó Mezei. These include the Lépcsőházi akció (lit. Staircase Action, 1977), in one of the photographs of which Szemadám appears, and, besides those already mentioned, Haris’s photographs also document the trip that the three of them made in 1977 in a Trabant to the northern part of historical Hungary [today Slovakia], following in the footsteps of painter Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka [1853–1919].

Even at this time, Szemadám produced traditional panel paintings and oil paintings. These paintings, depicting stylised, emblematic animals – often birds – and abstract fragments of form, are characterised by reduced shapes, emphatic colour fields and firm contours. Most of these works can be linked to the traditions of classical avant-garde. At times entirely constructive compositions can be observed – Téli táj (Winter landscape), though for the most part they fit into the current of organic abstraction –Vörös-kék kompozíció (lit. Red-blue composition), Madár (lit. Bird), Tigrisfej (Tiger Head), Bogárkirály (King Bug). There are also surreal-figurative compositions – A vörös macska háza (lit. The House of the Red Cat), Sellők (lit. Mermaids) – and the cultic world of icons and masks is also evoked in several works of this period – Szent (lit. Saint), Ifjúkori önarckép (Self-portrait as a youth), Keresztelő Szent János levágott feje (lit. The Severed Head of Saint John the Baptist) – all of which later continued to live on in his oeuvre, ensuring thematic-stylistic continuity.

Thematic Threads

Szemadám’s working method often spans decades; he frequently returns to a composition years later to develop it further. For this reason, he generally does not date his paintings, and his works cannot be arranged in a strict chronological order. Thus, the time of the works becomes identical with the artist’s time, interpreting the oeuvre as a coherent, indivisible whole. Accordingly, his painting can best be examined not chronologically, but in thematic units.

Time and the Past

In György Szemadám’s art, time is fundamentally perceptible in his engagement with historical memory. Two distinct attitudes can be observed in this relationship to the past: one draws on collective memory, summarising the universal lessons of past events and artistic processes, while the other (naturally) represents personal points, events, settings as connected to history, historical events, the past, and the history of art – well as reflects the subjective imprints of universal heritage.

According to Ottó Mezei, his contemporary and witness to his art, Szemadám most vividly succeeded in representing the present – the quest of the 1960s and 1970s generation – in the photo series of the action Helyzetgyakorlatok (Situation exercises), presented in October 1974 in the foyer of the Egyetemi Színpad (lit. University Stage) in Budapest.

Although Szemadám essentially (and deliberately) stood apart from trends, distancing himself from artistic fashions, his intense connection with the past also made him part of a contemporary phenomenon: archaising. This return to the past can be observed among a number of contemporary artists who, while working in isolated micro-worlds, were connected spiritually by their inquiries and interests in this direction. Naturally, they did not organise into groups, but this orientation towards the past could be said to have run like an underground stream through their art.

While György Szemadám consistently rebelled against artistic fashions and obligatory trends, he nevertheless sought to realise his innovative intentions through old, traditional means. In most of his works he remained with the traditional panel painting format, and, apart from some form-breaking actions and objects of his early creative period, he produced his paintings using oil, one of the most authentic and venerable techniques. His early art is characterised by the incorporation of the legacy of the classical avant-garde. His figurativity is most often paired with surreal content, linking him with such renowned exponents of the movement as Salvador Dalí or René Magritte, while his abstraction relates to the lyrical-constructivist direction of the genre. From the second half of the 1980s, Szemadám’s entire mode of expression became more classicised and figurative, characterised by meticulousness, elaboration and strong contours, while still partly remaining within his earlier themes.

Beyond the use of traditional means, other fields of archaising may also be observed in his work. One is the aforementioned personal relationship with the (historical) past as a perspective. This includes those works in which art-historical topoi or quotations appear, sometimes as paraphrases of well-known works of art, placing historical and art-historical models in new relations. In contemporary art, such use of models and quotations is also closely linked to archaising.

From the beginning, art-historical predecessors and painterly models appearing in the form of quotations may be found in György Szemadám’s work. His earliest such works include the already mentioned Burning giraffe action (1973) and the photo series made of it, which paid homage to Salvador Dalí on the occasion of his birthday. In his photo-montage series of the early 1970s he not only brought the past into the same time frame with the present but also juxtaposed different past epochs and the figures important to him who had lived in different times. Thus, in his montages of King Kong, a Szent Szörnyeteg (lit. King-Kong, the Saint Monster, 1976), art-historical quotations also emerge, including Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka’s Marokkói tanító (lit. Moroccan Teacher, 1908), and Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Marat (1793).

Another photo-montage series, A halhatatlanság emlékművei (lit. Monuments of Immortality), created in the 1970s, includes a piece showing Lorenzo de’ Medici’s tomb (1520–1545), supplemented by the statesman’s own death mask. Another work depicts Andrea Mantegna’s The Lamentation over the Dead Christ (1480) combined with the death mask of Lev Tolstoy (1828–1910), an artist who lived in another place and time. The third montage in the series spans even greater distances: the Great Sphinx of Giza, created in the 3rd millennium BC in Egyptian art, is combined with the death mask of the English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher and alchemist (!) Isaac Newton (1642–1720).

Later, several of his oil paintings also gave emphasis to art-historical references, quotations and paraphrases. In these works, too, artists and works from different periods were transformed into contemporaries. Thus, even across centuries, a party could take place at which Hans Holbein and Marcel Duchamp play chess. Although their figures are not literally depicted, their spirit pervades the metaphysical composition. Duchamp is also the protagonist of Hommage á Rrose Sélavy, in which Szemadám paid tribute to Duchamp – appearing in women’s clothes and under a female pseudonym – as a master of role-playing (also significant in Szemadám’s own art).

Some of his paintings evoke the atmosphere of his revered predecessors. For example, several of his works recall Magritte’s suffocating, oppressively desolate metaphysical compositions, without either the title or a single concrete visual quotation referring to them. Yet the atmosphere of these works, painted in deep colours and sharp contours – for instance Húsvét (lit. Easter) or …csend… (lit. …silence…) – recalls the chilling atmosphere of Magritte’s surrealist paintings.

In Interieur behasított képpel és Vermeer motívummal (lit. Interior with Slashed Painting and Vermeer Motif), where the curtain motif named in the title appears as a quotation, the work forms a bridge through art between different eras and places – that is, between past, present and any future. For not only the interior depicted, but another detail, the “slashed painting” referred to in the title, points to the present: one of György Szemadám’s own works, Performance I.

The destruction of the image as a metaphor of time is even more vividly present in the oil painting Ős (Dosztojevszkij) (lit. Ancestor [Dostoevsky]), where the centre of the portrait is almost entirely missing. The canvas is visible in an irregular patch beneath the paint layers, as though the paint had flaked away with the passage of time. A horizontal fissure also tears through the canvas in Időutasok egy kiállításon (lit. Time Travellers at an Exhibition). In this work, the child siblings “transposed” from the painting of an unknown 19th-century master stand in an exhibition space where modern paintings hang on the walls. In the background is one of Szemadám’s bird paintings, a variant of Performance II., as a reference to the personal present. The shadow-like silhouettes of these same children appear in Szemadám’s Vonuló darvak (lit. Migrating Cranes). It is as if the same children at this exhibition were looking at Szemadám’s painting, their shadows falling across the canvas as they stand before it.

Archaising in György Szemadám’s work expands into an archaeological content in Sírlelet (lit. Grave Find), a relief-collage in which he “artificially” constructs finds, evoking the excavation of an ancient tomb. Yet this is only an archaeological vision, in which the artist preserves and creates the traces of a vanished or imagined civilisation.

Private History

Although Sándor Simonyi-Semadam, former Prime Minister of Hungary and one of the signatories of the Treaty of Trianon [1920, peace treaty ending Hungary’s participation in the First World War], was not a direct ancestor of György Szemadám, he was nevertheless a close relative of the artist’s family.

In this way, personal ties and family heritage become interwoven with the settings and events of history. The First World War is evoked, among other works, in the painting Limanova – 1915. The collage Császármadár – Nagyapám emlékére (lit. Hazel Grouse – In Memory of My Grandfather) is based on a damaged, archaic-looking, brown-toned archival photograph. Over this photograph of horsemen marching in formation along a road, Szemadám painted a hazel grouse in flight, wings outstretched, soaring into the foreground. The bird’s name itself alludes to the era [the meaning of Hungarian ‘császár’ is ‘emperor’ – an allusion to the Habsburgs]; at the same time, since the hazel grouse occurs in Hungary only in the North Hungarian Mountains and in small numbers, it is strictly protected, lending the composition an additional symbolic charge.

The siblings borrowed from a 19th-century painting reappear in several of Szemadám’s works, as a metaphor for his own childhood, usually depicted in silhouette. This is especially apparent in the series Iskolaéveimről (1956 emlékére) (lit. My School Years [In Memory of 1956]). Like the members of his generation, Szemadám was a witness to the 1950s and to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and he continues to carry with him its lessons and legacy. The rebellious, “revolutionary” attitude of his early artistic work can be traced back to the impact of this period and to the intellectual heritage of 1956.

Perhaps the most striking example of the intertwining of personal and universal past in Szemadám’s art is Lélekszkafander (lit. Soul Spacesuit). The work is based on the artist’s own infant swaddling cloth – which had once belonged to his mother as well – thereby linking generations within the family. When spread out, the cloth assumes the form of the ground plan of a medieval cross-shaped church, evoking centuries of history through a deeply personal object. White in colour and cross-shaped when unfolded, the swaddling cloth, the newborn’s first garment, suggests the cyclical nature of human existence: in death we are rendered as vulnerable as at the moment of birth.

Bird’s-Eye Views

From the very beginning, and continuing to the present day, one of the most characteristic themes of György Szemadám’s art has been the bird. Originally, he had wanted to become an ornithologist. This fascination never left him: he continues to roam the countryside, observing birds. Owing to his scientific interest, the bird became the focal subject of his observations and contemplations, and, proceeding from this yet simultaneously transcending it, it assumed the role of the fundamental theme of his painting – a source of inspiration, rich in symbolism. Szemadám gives the impression of painting these creatures, so diverse in their perfection, purely in the spirit of study and naturalistic representation, as if their very existence embodied the boundless imagination of a divine or artistic creator. At the same time, however, he deliberately transforms his inspiration: sometimes stylising his birds, sometimes altering them subtly or essentially, sometimes allowing them to soar in metaphysically purified spaces. Another key element of this deliberation is his knowledge of the system of bird symbolism and his conscious evocation of these layers of meaning. As one of the authors of the Jelképtár (lit. Dictionary of Symbols), he himself wrote the entry on “bird”. As he observed, the bird is one of the most ancient and meaningful of all symbols: a sign of the essence of the human being, of the soul itself, as in Ancient Egypt; a bearer of celestial messages; or an emblem of love for God. In its symbolic dimension, the bird signifies above all a connection between the earthly and the celestial, the worldly and the otherworldly, the body and the soul. In this sense it functions as a medium – much like a work of art, which creates connections and enables us to transcend the confines of the everyday, to contemplate existence from other perspectives, to think in larger dimensions.

The mediating role of Szemadám’s birds and paintings is further emphasised by the frames, which increasingly become organic parts of the works. Sometimes the composition continues onto them, so that the birds’ flight is no longer constrained by the boundary of the frame. At other times, frames reminiscent of window shutters or mirror surrounds do not so much separate the viewer’s space from that of the painting as create a passage between them.

Fundamentally and unmistakably, the bird is a symbol of flight and of freedom. This symbolism came to the fore in Szemadám’s early art, when, standing outside the official art scene, he consistently expressed through his creative acts and gestures his faith in the supremacy of artistic and human freedom. In 1975, driven by the desire to escape a stifling atmosphere and by a longing for a free life, he resolved to flee to the West, travelling to Hamburg to stay with a friend, intending to settle there. But he could not recognise, could not come to know, the calls of the birds there. This made him realise that in an alien world, in a foreign environment and culture, he could not put down roots, could not call it home. And so, he returned to Hungary. As he himself put it, the birds brought him back.

Despite the difficulties of starting anew and the sense of exclusion that awaited him on his return after this illegal flight, the birds also taught him that one must always fashion one’s own personal freedom within the given circumstances and within one’s chosen or inherited homeland. Szemadám did the same, happily traversing familiar landscapes, binoculars slung round his neck, listening to the bird calls he knew so well. In his paintings, with birds soaring or broken-winged, he once again roamed the boundless spaces of his imagination and artistic invention.

In his earliest works, birds appeared in abstract or analytic compositions, such as Madár (lit. Bird), painted around 1971 in a style of pure, geometric forms; or in the ink drawing illustrating Edgar Allan Poe’s poem; or in the oil painting Madárfej – Szekvencia (lit. Bird Head – Sequence), structured as a matrix.

Later paintings feature specific species: Nyílfarkú réce (lit. Pintail Duck), Hajnalmadár (lit. Wallcreeper), Jégmadár (lit. Kingfisher), Kócsag (Egret), Dunnalúd (lit. White-fronted Goose), Vonuló darvak (lit. Migrating Cranes), Zöld küllő (Katinak) (lit. Green Woodpecker [For Kati]), Csér – szem (lit. Tern – Eye), Japános kép bakcsóval (lit. Japanese-style Picture with Night Heron), Vasrács süvöltővel (lit. Iron Grille with Bullfinch), and Romantikus táj bagollyal (lit. Romantic Landscape with Owl). Sometimes these appear in their natural habitats (such as the egret in the reedbed), sometimes in flight, sometimes stylised in allegorical or metaphysical-surreal compositions (for example, Ripacs Martin éjszakája [lit. The Night of Pincher Martin]). On certain canvases (Bird; Pintail Duck), the bird signifies not only the connection between heaven and earth but also appears at the boundary between sky and water, symbolising the primordial unity of the two realms. It is as though the Creator had made birds to demonstrate the separation of the “waters under the firmament from the waters above the firmament”. One of the finest expressions of freedom and flight in Szemadám’s oeuvre is the oil painting Madarak útján (lit. On the Path of Birds). This work evokes the atmospheric quality of East Asian art, so that the “path” of the title may also suggest the Tao. Against the breathing, rippling blue of the sky, a flock of birds emerges from the left, flying towards the centre of the canvas, while to the right, in the background, the disk of the setting sun glimmers faintly.

The birdcage, the synonym of lost freedom and confinement, appeared as early as the 1973 performance Identification Experiment, and in later oil paintings such as Madárház XIV. (lit. Birdhouse XIV). In the latter, a bird perches on a branch while, in the background, a fragment of an empty cage can be seen.

Painted in 1989, the year of the regime change in Hungary, Interieur kalitkából szabadult madárral (lit. Interior with Bird Escaping from Cage) offers one of the most direct and emblematic summaries of the interpretation of the bird as a metaphor of freedom. Here, the cage – symbol of confinement, imprisonment and limitation – serves to intensify and highlight this meaning.

Masks of all kind

A mask conceals one from the outside world; behind it, our features remain hidden. At the same time, a mask also characterises, revealing much about its wearer. In Szemadám’s art, the mask appears as a prop in the role-play of identity. It featured as early as his 1973 performance Identification Experiment, in which one of the exhibited objects was a plaster mask of his own face, symbolising the artist as an individual. Yet this also relates to the cultic world of death masks. A death mask is the relic of relics: the imprint of the very last moment of a living face. It becomes an object of reverence; and if it represents a notable figure, it may become an object of cult or a work of art. This association between the plaster cast of the artist’s own face and the death mask is reinforced by his earlier series Három fotómontázs (lit. Three Photomontages), in which Szemadám uses death masks as mediators between different time frames.

Perhaps it is in the mask, too, that his faith in the transcendent power of art most vividly takes form. Among his earliest works may be mentioned The Severed Head of Saint John the Baptist, an “offering mask” painted onto a felt hat. The mask, once again, brings the artist into dialogue with the past. Masks are among the oldest and most elemental instruments of ritual role-play. Just as dance or song is a vital part of a shamanistic rite (a subject alluded to in the painting Sámánének [lit. Shaman’s Song]), so too is the mask a crucial instrument of transformation (for example, Maszáj önarckép [lit. Masai Self-Portrait]). In Szemadám’s art, the mask is not merely a device for defining identity but its most fundamental medium.

In certain works, such as his role-playing self-representation as the Fool, Szemadám is not simply the wearer of the mask but the mask itself, the medium. The Fool also appears, in smaller format, in the oil painting A tékozló fiú (lit. The Prodigal Son). Here the card format, and identification with playing cards, alludes to the fickleness of fortune and to the way fate simultaneously determines its course. More than once in his life, Szemadám had to begin anew with a “clean slate”, rebuilding his life and himself from nothing. Through the playing card, his personal stories and experiences are connected to universal meanings, and thus the card becomes the symbol of the thin boundary between the individual and the universal, the contingent and the determined.

The Tarot-maszkok (lit. Tarot Masks) presents an entire series of masks of great significance for the artist. In the Madár-maszkos önarckép (lit. Self-Portrait with Bird Mask), he identifies himself with the bird, his most important artistic symbol. Here, the symbolism of the bird, discussed in the previous section, is enriched by the act of identification: through the bird mask, the artist symbolically dons not only the role of the creator of birds but also the marvellous qualities of the creatures themselves.

In the painting Transzformáció (lit. Transformation), the artist appears fully transformed, recognisable only through the symbols of his identity, dissolved within them. Among the stylised wings of birds flying in the background, the spade sign of French playing cards emerges. Thus, by bringing together birds and playing cards – the masks he had previously “worn” – the painting refers to the artist, expanding the interpretive possibilities linked to birds and making explicit his identification with them. One who follows birds as steadfastly as György Szemadám, seeking them out with perseverance, eventually finds them. But in the process, and through them, as he himself remarked, he not only found his homeland again – as his paintings reveal, but he also found himself.

[2017]