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Journalism of Courage
They stood on two sides of the political spectrum, but between themselves, Hungarian artists Saacute;ndor Bortnyik and Endre Baacute;lint embraced the main art trends of the 20th century 8212; cubism, expressionism, constructivism and surrealism. An ongoing exhibition of their prints at the Hungarian Cultural Centre, thus, provides a glimpse into the European art history of the last century.
Bortnyik, who died in 1976, pushed forward the avant-garde movement of the early 1920s and the exhibition shows how he represented his subjects 8212; a railway station or a group of people 8212; from multiple perspectives through geometrical figures. Bortnyik was a left-wing artist, quite close to Socialist Realism movement, and there is a small black-and-white portrait of Lenin to remind you of that.
Diametrically opposing his geometrical figures is Baacute;lint8217;s surrealistic style. 8220;Baacute;lint8217;s prints are a total denial of the communist aesthetics of those days,8221; said Imre Laacute;zaacute;r, director of the Hungarian Cultural Centre. His macabre collages denounced the Soviet system that ruled Hungary after World War II. The influences of Sigmund Freud8217;s theory of the subconscious are evident in his surrealistic works that depict ideas such as death, fear and torture in a rather surprising way. Nuclear Cross, for instance, features the smoke of a nuclear blast with a fork and a knife in the middle. 8220;There cannot be only one interpretation,8221; says Lazar.
The exhibition is on till November 7
