CURRICILUM VITAE

(Interioris)

I have often written down my date of birth: 21 January 1930, in all kinds of necessary biographies, so that it appears truly immovable and unchangeable to me. Like my sculptures and statuettes. They don't change, but they define me. And with this, I would like to emphasize also the thousands of years old method of sculpting that I practice. My works are not mobile, not concepts, not performances, not fleeting or disappearing, and they cannot be changed. They remain on my neck with full responsibility, due to happiness or shame, but with the ever-present compulsion to take responsibility and to keep presenting the lessons learned.

Placing me on the tracks at college, as a defining foundational impetus, also directed me towards this stable path. With this, I almost declare in which era I completed my studies: indeed, in that much-mentioned socialist-realist times, which has since been condemned so many times, including by ourselves, who were active participants of that era. Now – 30 years later – that the intellectual fashions that were already raging in Europe, and appeared only later in Hungary – but with the same extreme force (yielding little results) – have subsided, looking back I cannot find so much to condemn in the former training methods that we received. We – as far as we were able – were taught to scale, and the basic intellectual and technical skills of the craft, provided practice and a good foundation for getting started. The current so-called modern methods are not achieving greater efficiency in the preparation for the profession. But perhaps – and I can appreciate this as an advantage – instead of the currently so fashionable and all-consuming pursuit of finding and expressing personality, art was defined for us as a collectively valid goal, which can be achieved through the nowadays completely forgotten artistic humility. This was the bag for the journey we were given, and looking back I can safely say that all the members of my generation who have remained in the profession carry their own personality and style, with which they are well acquainted. Each according to their own weight and abilities, of course, but maturely. Not without the need for self-renewal: but free from the stress of the rush for fashion.

So I consider myself – almost with a certain self-indulgence – a conservative sculptor. I feel comfortable in that, and I feel my development to be secure. I even take the risk of phrasing platitudes. There are times when nothing more can or should be said.

My programme is the continuous development of traditions, I am almost a tool for this. Even under their wings, I looked at the work of my masters Mikus, Stróbl, Pátzay with a certain criticism, just as my former students look at my work, but I still embrace learning from them. Based on this, my development has been relatively harmonious, with more or less shaking.

The changes happened in me in the usual way: dissatisfaction with the present, boredom, looking around, absorption, and the application of a new solution that was offered almost unnoticed, and was not very conscious at first. Now I watch the process cunningly, without interfering, but following closely, calculating here and there the next step with the pleasure of slow discovery, so that I am both the object and the subject of observing myself. I want to continue to observe on this way my changes, which happily surprise even me, and to create and enjoy my work in relation to them. Because I enjoy my craft very much, with all its worries, troubles, gnawing, cursing, dust, dirt, gas, smoke, health-consuming conditions, everything. Perhaps some kind of art can grow out of it one day, and I would like to pass it on directly, without an intermediary, to anyone who is on the same wavelength: perhaps they will find pleasure in it.