Kemény_Struggling

Sculptural manifestos of liberty:

Oeuvre Exhibition of Judit Kemény (1918-2009)

"Someday there will be a possibility for sculptures to float above the earth, like the planets in the solar system; these sculptures will be the memorials to a new kind of approach to nature, and a new type of person." Judit Kemény

One of Tat Gallery's most important research programs pursued in the field of art history is the elaboration of Judit Kemény's (1918-2009) oeuvre. A significant component of the project – commenced in 2009 – is the organization of an exhibition series on the artist, who has been neglected for ideological reasons since 1948. Struggling to live, a documentary, historical and genealogical volume - ranging to 214 pages - was completed at the end of 2011. The completion of the Hungarian-English monograph was preceded by the elaboration of the almost ten thousand pages long contemporary documental estate and an artistic one consisting of more than thousand items.

The first public release of the book takes place on 16th September 2012 from 5 pm on the Open Day of the National Theatre (the detailed program is to be found below or at www.nemzetiszinhaz.hu.) The guests of the premiere are Róbert Alföldi, director of the theatre and Imre Bretus, author and editor of the volume. The representatives of those partners and institutions who were committed supporters of the elaboration of the oeuvre will also be present at the event.

The talk organized on the occasion of the book release offers the audience a chance to become familiar with a unique Middle-European intellectual thriller. The Kemény family has been strongly damaged by fate and history. At times, the father, Gábor, and the girls, Katalin and Judit, were raised, at other times, they were precipitated into the deepest abyss. And only because they believed in talent, quality (as opposed to quantity), ethics, decency, responsibility and liberty.

After 1948 – some marginal opportunities aside – she had the chance to introduce herself to the audience at the age of sixty-six. The problem never lay in her art, her qualities, her intellectual achievement, her talent; the silence surrounding her can be traced back to several other reasons. On the one hand the current regime always had the excuse to ignore her art either because of her middle class origins or her ideological commitment. On the other hand she was considered an abstract artist in the second half of the 1940s, which sealed her fate for long decades.

On the occasion of the release a studio exhibition will open in the National Theatre, where the audience can have a look at the graphic plans of Judit Kemény’s music-sculptures and her experimentations in producing architectural and abstract sculptures. During the event, actors Eszter Bánfalvi, János Kulka, and Dávid Szatory will resuscitate the details and important stages of Gábor and Judit Kemény's lives using films and a narrated tale. Further exhibited items include Judit’s plans for animation films and her fashion designs puplished in current newspapers in 1939. These dresses have been reconstructed and will be presented by teachers and students of Jelky András Fashion High School (Budapest).

Oeuvre exhibition of artist Judit Kemény (1918–2009)

It is not unusual in the history of 20th century fine arts, in the decades following 1945, that some creative artists were overlooked for one reason or another. Judit Kemény was also one of those autonomous thinking fine artists who were compelled to live in almost total isolation during the most important period of their lives. Judit Kemény’s walk of life is at the same time the destiny of those autonomous intellectual thinkers of tragic destiny who, in spite of being overlooked and isolated, have even so left a rich creative legacy behind them. For ideological reasons, Judit Kemény was able to introduce herself for the first time since 1948 in an independent exhibition in 1966, but she could not exhibit her sculptures on this occasion. She had to wait until she was sixty six years old for her first retrospective exhibition in 1984. There was never a problem with her art, her quality, her intellectual achievement or her talent; the silence surrounding her may be traced to numerous other causes. One was that by reason of either her bourgeois origin or her intellectual commitment, the current regime always had an excuse not to notice her art. Another reason was that in the second half of the 1940s she was listed among abstract artists, thus sealing her fate for decades to come.

An understanding of Judit Kemény’s oeuvre may be approached from a number of angles. For their path of life and its developmental directions, the Kemény sisters – Katalin and Judit – received a determinative methodology from their father Gábor Kemény. The democratic, humanist, value-based educationalist placed on his daughters’ shoulders the weight of a moral value system above all things, the obligation of a thinking, creative person and the “burden” of bearing that responsibility. Thanks to the intelligentsia salon established around the father – their regular guests including Miklós Radnóti, writers for the magazine Nyugat (West), Attila József, György Lukács, Béla Hamvas, as well as progressive fine artists and educators – from 1935 Judit Kemény was subject to intensive intellectual influences; around this time she committed herself to the fine arts.

An important thread in understanding Judit Kemény’s life’s work is her relationship with her sister Katalin Kemény, author and literary translator, and with her sister’s husband Béla Hamvas, author, philosopher and essayist, banned after World War II for ideological reasons. Béla Hamvas’s and Katalin Kemény’s intellectual achievements and their circle of friends permeated Judit Kemény’s thinking and her art. She put on a joint exhibition in 1945 with Erzsébet Forgács Hann, Margit Anna, Mária Modok and Júlia Vajda. She maintained professional and friendship links with the creative artists of the European School, Sándor Weöres, Iván Dévényi, Dr. Kálmán Tompa, an art collector of outstanding perception, and Zoltán Borbereki Kovács, a sculptor who emigrated to South Africa. Due to her ties of family and friendship, between 1948 and 1989 Judit Kemény was often wreathed in suspicion on the part of the decision makers. Judit Kemény is integrally linked with the intellectual environment of the European School; her art blossomed in this circle.

In the decades following 1948, Judit Kemény invested a huge amount of energy in dispersing the silence surrounding her art. By the 1980s, she had been broken by the seemingly pointless struggle. On 26 January 1981, she wrote in a letter to one of her closest friends, fellow artist Ferenc Martyn: “I am old enough by now to see behind the carefully drawn curtains.”

Judit Kemény had begun to experiment with the abstract in the early 1940s, she began to be occupied by locating movement consummated in space, flight, soaring, art and individual destiny in another dimension, the representation of existence free of limitations. She was not interested in the aesthetics of the abstract, but the monumentality of planes, spaces, time and movement. Her sculpture designs may be interpreted as grandiose appeals, manifestos on freedom. Judit Kemény’s sculpture designs and graphic works also explore the border territory between architecture and the fine arts, they are experiments on the penetrability of public square sculpture and modern architecture. The upward striving forms and thought contents dated from the middle of the 1940s fit Judit Kemény into the mainstream of modern art. Representatives of this sculptural mentality are George Rickey who lived in the United States, and the sculptors of the Italian avant-garde.

The Central Eastern European region must think through its intellectual processes as soon as possible, in terms of what thoughts and oeuvres are valuable by reason of local, but at the same time universal colour. We will not be led out of provincialism by a provincial attitude, but by high quality intellectual achievement. The discovery of high standard local intellectual achievements and presenting these oeuvres to the public could be a starting point. The value of the life’s work and creative path of Judit Kemény, who passed away in 2009 at the age of ninety one, is due to this intellectual background.

I am his daughter…

According to the minutes taken at the end of year session of the College of Fine Arts on 28 June 1946, seven students were not allowed to reenrol for the following year. Judit Kemény did not or could not satisfy the requirements of a single subject. It is improbable that Judit Kemény did not take her studies seriously, after all, she had always wanted to become an artist. There is no documentation on why, after a successful first semester, she was judged to be inept in all subjects at the end of the year. Perhaps her radical left-wing presence, openly admitted even at college, could have been the pretext for removing her. She wrote to art historian Júlia Szabó about the reason for this lack of success, as well as her failures in gaining admission to the College of Fine Arts before 1945, in a letter dated 1983:

“I am the daughter [Gábor Kemény’s] of him who for decades had to bear the difficult burdens and discriminations, which also weighed on the daughter of a well-known left-wing activist at that time. I was even not admitted to the College of Fine Arts because of my father’s conduct; the ones accepted at the entrance exams were those whose drawings I corrected, but there was no place for me.”

After 1948, however, she could not continue the studies she had started because of developments in the political forces.

In favour of the abstract and the European School

In a writing to be found in the legacy, Judit Kemény also took a stand in the controversy between realist and abstract art. According to her thesis, in art, our external and internal worlds must be in balance. Due to her experiments with abstract themes, her art may be compared with that of Ferenc Martyn, Béla Bán, Erzsébet Forgács Hann, Tamás Lossonczy, Júlia Vajda, Mária Modok and Sándor Molnár. This is confirmed by art historian Júlia Szabó in 1984: “In her portrait drawings, Judit Kemény strives for a similarly translucent but precise depiction of the human psyche and intellect in the play of apparently freely running lines as Béla Bán in the forties and fifties, or as Erzsébet Forgács Hann did in drawings, paintings and sculptures. In a few of her other sculptures, Judit Kemény […] has affinity with the warm, magnetic formations and grotesque austerity of Birman Bokros. In her drawings and sculptures, the correlations of the concrete and abstract world create series in similar degrees to the works of Ferenc Martyn. The continuation of analogies, however, distracts attention from her own thought world, decades in formation, the movement of which is directed by its own internally defined choreography. The artist regards the depiction of the most varied forms of movement, manifesting in a system of drawn, painted and spatial constructions, as one of her chief tasks, consciously undertaken, and she brings these forth in her systems of coloured lines and her complex constructions made from very simple materials (wire, steel plate, plastic). So many times the initial experiences for her works, musical associations such as dance – the cosmic dance – are motifs also existing in many kinds of natural movement. At such times, her constructions make contact with the base merely at a single point, like dancers twirling on the tips of their toes. Naturally, their direction is the upward striving vertical. […] In Judit Kemény’s drawing and sculpture design series, open and closed force systems, worlds growing, expanding and decomposing into their elements appear in rich variety.”

In spite of the clear connection, art history research to date has not linked Judit Kemény with the European School community. An interesting note is to be found in the legacy documentary material, which Judit Kemény wrote in a letter to art historian Júlia Szabó in 1984. It appears from the note, that she was in contact with the artists of the European School and knew them well: “It seems that what has been communicated in connection with the European School, the facts which can already be called historical, do not agree with the ‘disguise’ redressed in official form. Changing a ‘disguise’ appearing as a fashion like this leads to tension in professional circles, because idols have to be demolished, and these idols have been set up by idols living today. After all, the discussion on the European School is not actually about artists at all; the whole thing seems not to be about the newness brought to birth by the blood and sweat of the artists, but ‘some sort of’ stationmasters known as the European School switching control points.”

The European School

On 13 October 1945, the European School community was also formed, to some extent made up of artists and intellectuals committed to left-wing ideas. Although in her spirituality, her attitude to art and her friendships she displayed a number of features in common with the members of the European School, at this time Judit Kemény still saw the possibility for the renewal of art in the intellectual circle taking shape around the Hungarian Communist Party. Episodes mentioned in the memoirs of close friend Árpád Mezei most certainly also played a part in her decision. According to these, various difficulties also arose in connection with the European School. These included the heterogeneous make-up of the community and its isolation from official cultural organisations. Pál Pátzay’s hostile attitude, as well as the unequivocal position taken against the European School by György Lukács as published in the press resulted in the early isolation of the frequently attacked workshop after its formation, and it soon discontinued its activities. The founders of the group include Imre Pán, Árpád Mezei, Pál Gegesi Kiss, Ernő Kállai, Lajos Kassák, Béla Hamvas, Miklós Szentkuthy, Margit Anna, Jenő Barcsay, Endre Bálint, Béla Bán, Lajos Barta, Dezső Bokros Birman, József Egry, Erzsébet Forgács Hann, Jenő Gadányi, Dezső Korniss, Júlia Vajda and Tibor Vilt.

In the October of 1945, in an exhibition held in the Democratic League of Hungarian Women, Judit Kemény was featured together with Erzsébet Forgács Hann, Margit Anna, Mária Modok and Júlia Vajda. There were four of her works in the exhibition space: a pastel entitled Munkábamenők (On the way to work), a nude study and two abstract works, a pastel entitled Álom (Dream) and a drawing called Vázlat (Sketch).

Genre experiments

In the life’s work of Judit Kemény, new experimental trends appeared in the 1960s. According to an article published in the press at the time, in order to solve the film shortage, young directors and screenplay writers were also given the opportunity to make television plays and films in a cooperative action between the Hunnia film studio and the television. Judit Kemény was interested in the new media: she began to experiment, producing storyboards and a screenplay with the title Tánc az ujjhegyen (Dance on tiptoe). The experimental short film for television tells the story of a couple’s relationship, narrated with dance, musical and pictorial elements.

In the early 1960s, she was also experimenting with dolls. Her passion for dolls was fed by her childhood experiences in Holland. She fashioned fairy tale figures, fit her characters into made up stories, looked for locations, and developed dramaturgic situations for her creations. She documented the plays in photographs, and presumably under the influence of the above challenge she also began to produce her fairy tale figures and stories systematically for the new medium of television.

For her fairy tale entitled Megtalált otthon (Found at home), surviving as a manuscript, for which Kócos Kata (Tousled Kate) and Pöttöm Peti (Tiny Pete) are the main characters, she produced a dramaturgic photographic series comprising 28 colour and 4 black and white snapshots. Judit Kemény had no chance of getting an order for a sculpture, and she had no income, so she could not even think of monumental creative art. The area of drawing and painting was left for her, or the excitement of the new medium and its relatively cheap material requirements. She held great hopes, that even if she could not make her way in the official mainstream of sculpture, at least she could have an opportunity with this genre.

Within the scope of the exhibition, intermedial creative artists have made an attempt to reconstruct Judit Kemény’s animation design. The film and its interpretation, produced using the drawings and dramaturgic instructions, evoke at once the pictorial approach of the sixties and contemporary echoes.

The fairy tale Megtalált otthon (Found at home) may be heard in a performance by Eszter Bánfalvi of the National Theatre.

Gérard Philipe

A strength of Judit Kemény’s figural representations is the quest for the internal qualities of characters, and an examination of how the trials of fate affect the soul. One of the most unified blocks in the oeuvre in this regard is a cycle of graphics-paintings, which she produced in the first half of the 1960s in memory of Gérard Philipe.

Comprising thirty two works, the series entitled Törvénytelen utazás, Gérard Philipe maszkjai mögött (Illegal journey, behind the masks of Gérard Philipe) circles the destiny of modern, struggling man, the talented actor, and the individual inevitably condemned to tragedy in his talent. In the personality and roles of Gérard Philipe, Judit Kemény was gripped by his authentic character portrayal of the figure of fate. Judit Kemény perceived a parallel between the characters played by the screen actor, so burdened with trials, and the circumstances influencing her own life, and she elaborated this parallel in the series. Gérard Philipe, agonising in the role of Modigliani as the artist undergoing a life and death struggle, as the young Faust, as Julien Sorel unable to avoid his fate, raised exciting personal and artistic questions for Judit Kemény. According to her notes written on the series: “If an actor often portrays a man on the edge of life and death, and he wants to play the role well, it is inevitable that he will cross over this edge by one or two degrees. From the point of view of life, this encroachment on the beyond is dangerous and illegal. It is a challenge to fate, and sometimes fate does not reject the challenge, but strikes back. This is one plane of an actor’s life history.”

Imre Bretus

/Translated by Ágnes Aratóné Könyv/

In September 2012, the public can find out more about Judit Kemény’s art in two locations. Together with a presentation of the monograph volume, an exhibition of her Zene (Music) series produced between 1943 and 1975 has opened in the National Theatre. In the Commerzbank Gallery, as supporting patron of the treatment and presentation of the life’s work, the most important works from the artist’s oeuvre can be seen. Archival documentary material may also be viewed at the exhibition: photographs, fashion designs, dramaturgic experiments all help us to understand the age in which Judit Kemény lived.