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ANNA, Margit
ANNA Margit
painter
(Borota, 23rd December 1913.–Bp., 3rd June 1991) Born Sicherman Margit, from a provincial Jewish family. At a young age she went to Budapest in around 1930, where she studied in the private school of János Vaszary, a teacher ousted from the academy (New Arts School). Here she met the painter Imre Ámos, with whom she lived together for several years, and whom she finally married in 1936. 1973: she was awarded the gold degree of the Honour for Work; 1975: artist of credit; 1987: eminent artist. Her earliest works were born in close interaction and intellectual kinship with Imre Ámos. Her pictures of the 1930s, painted in light colours, depicting distant-looking women figures, are imbued with an objectless nostalgy. Most of the time she portrayed herself; her self-portraits were always in a focal position in her art, constituting a sort of autobiography. Her paintings at the time were definitely of decorative nature, the very closely set tones evoke the French, primarily Bonnardo. In the centre of her artistic attention were Gulácsy, Csontváry, Derkovits, Chagall and Picasso. In 1937, at the time of the World Exhibition, she went to Paris with Imre Ámos, where they got acquainted with Chagall, but neither their life nor their art was fundamentally transformed by their experiences gained here. The summers between 1938 and 1941 she spent with Ámos in Szentendre, where their circle of friends included Lajos Vajda, Júlia Vajda, Dezső Korniss, Emil Kelemen, Endre Rozsda, Lajos Barta, Béla Bán. In the 1940s, when Ámos was forced to do labour service more and more often, the contours on her drawings and paintings became stronger, hooping and squeezing the figures. The self-portraits were of such great significance that they often appeared as a picture-in-picture motif on her still lives, breaking the compass of artistic forms. Almost without exception, she put herself in all the female figures, searching for and trying on roles – she as the dancer, the Muse, Venus, the painter, a prostitute, orphan, fugitive. In 1945 she was a founding member of the European School. Already before 1945 she had had the initial forms of a grotesque figure, consisting of only a head, hands and an upper body, which was now simplified into one elementary form, a ball head, taking on various roles: the saviour, a prophet, fisherman, one of the Fates, a widow. Also in these figures, she often painted self-portraits, in which, instead of similarities, attributes served as means of identification. Later she changed her early tempera technique into oil, the colours applied became harsher and more strident. Her paintings, resembling the simplicity of children’s drawings, but at the same time bearing an elementary force and impressionable by the archaic layers of folk art and culture, had their roots back in Vajda’s and Korniss’ programme in Szentendre; they gained reinforcement from the tradition chosen by the European School, and agreed with the approach of the COBRA-group. After the closure of the European School, she was for a long time not given opportunity for one-man shows, she was silent between 1948 and 1953. When she resumed work, dolls, puppets and clowns came back as her main figures. She also painted narrative pictures, inspired by literary works. By the end of the 1950s, to accompany the puppet theme, was born a cluster of lyrical pieces, reviving secession and the figures of Gulácsy, using more restrained colours, some of which pictures were drawn in charcoal on canvas. She kept her interest in folk art and in city folklore, however it underwent some change, leading from potato-women and gourd-figures to modern daub. Both her mode of painting and her themes approached the grotesque, her way of looking at things bore characteristics of both surrealism and expressive arts. Her biblical pictures were inspired by the themes of popular imagery, market merchandise, glass paintings and “servant folklore”. The Jewish religion and traditions had appeared already in her pre-war works, though hidden at the time, while from the late-1960s she painted them clear-cut and easily recognisable. Her pictures of the 1970s were dominated by naive, conscious primitivism, dauby objects and photos stuck into the paintings, and extraordinary colourfulness. Her interest in folk art regained its timeliness at the time of the rediscovery of the dance hall movement and people’s culture. She expressed family and historic tragedies in puppets. Between the late-1970s and her death she treated the topics of war, Jewishness, widowhood and loneliness, with ironic, grotesque, evil and demonic tones, in her pictures saturated with ambivalence. She continues painting self portraits, which sometimes transformed into metaphors or allegories. She delineated her own deforming body and the stages preceding passing, her pictures became more and more bitter in their tone, which was reinforced by their telling titles and the messages written at the back of the canvas. Her works are kept in significant private and public collections, including the Hungarian National G., the Janus Pannonius Museum in Pécs, the Ferenczy Museum in Szentendre, and the Margit Anna-Imre Ámos Memorial House opened in 1984 in the same town. One-man shows: 1948: The XXXVIII. exhibition of the European School; 1968: Ernst M. (catalogue); 1970: JPM, Pécs; 1974: Helikon G.; 1978: Műcsarnok; 1982: Bartók B. Műv. H., Szeged; 1983: MNG (catalogue); 1984: G. Kara, Genf; 1987: Fészek G.; 1988: Műhely G., Szentendre; 1989: Kunstbetrieb, Dachau (catalogue). Selected group exhibitions: 1934: Munkácsy Guild; 1936: KUT, Nemzeti Szalon; 1936: Imre Ámos, Margit Anna, Tibor Gertler and Th. Heine, Ernst M.; 1942: Liberty and the nation, Szocialista Képzőművészek Csoportja; 1944: New Romantics, Tamás G.; 1956: Six painters, Keresztény M., Esztergom; 1958: Les Partenaires, Párizs; 1969: Margit Anna and Imre Ámos, Damjanich M., Szolnok; 1969: Szentendre art, Csók Képtár, Szfvár; 1976: Szentendre art, MNG; 1987: The „old” avantgarde – 8 Szentendre artists, Műhely G., Szentendre; 1988: Second Wave of the Hungarian Avantgarde, Kövesdy G., New York; 1990: Margit Anna and Imre Ámos, Vigadó G. Further reading: E. Kállai: ~, Jövendő, 21st March 1946; Á. Mezei: ~, MŰV, 1967/1.; Á. Mezei: (catalogue, introductory study, Ernst M., 1968); S. Mándy: ~, Magyar Műhely, VII/25., 15th January 1968; B. Horgas: ~’s pictures, Valóság, XI/8., 1968; L. Németh: Current Exhibitions (in it about ~), NHQ, 1968 Winter; K. S. NAGY: ~ (monograph), Bp., 1971; K. Dávid: ~ (monograph), Bp., 1980; É. Körner: (catalogue, introductory study, MNG, 1983); „Ich kann die Traurigkeit aus nur hinausmalen”, Bericht von Peter Meleghy, Art, Das Kunstmagazin, February 1985.
(Turai, Hedvig)
painter
(Borota, 23rd December 1913.–Bp., 3rd June 1991) Born Sicherman Margit, from a provincial Jewish family. At a young age she went to Budapest in around 1930, where she studied in the private school of János Vaszary, a teacher ousted from the academy (New Arts School). Here she met the painter Imre Ámos, with whom she lived together for several years, and whom she finally married in 1936. 1973: she was awarded the gold degree of the Honour for Work; 1975: artist of credit; 1987: eminent artist. Her earliest works were born in close interaction and intellectual kinship with Imre Ámos. Her pictures of the 1930s, painted in light colours, depicting distant-looking women figures, are imbued with an objectless nostalgy. Most of the time she portrayed herself; her self-portraits were always in a focal position in her art, constituting a sort of autobiography. Her paintings at the time were definitely of decorative nature, the very closely set tones evoke the French, primarily Bonnardo. In the centre of her artistic attention were Gulácsy, Csontváry, Derkovits, Chagall and Picasso. In 1937, at the time of the World Exhibition, she went to Paris with Imre Ámos, where they got acquainted with Chagall, but neither their life nor their art was fundamentally transformed by their experiences gained here. The summers between 1938 and 1941 she spent with Ámos in Szentendre, where their circle of friends included Lajos Vajda, Júlia Vajda, Dezső Korniss, Emil Kelemen, Endre Rozsda, Lajos Barta, Béla Bán. In the 1940s, when Ámos was forced to do labour service more and more often, the contours on her drawings and paintings became stronger, hooping and squeezing the figures. The self-portraits were of such great significance that they often appeared as a picture-in-picture motif on her still lives, breaking the compass of artistic forms. Almost without exception, she put herself in all the female figures, searching for and trying on roles – she as the dancer, the Muse, Venus, the painter, a prostitute, orphan, fugitive. In 1945 she was a founding member of the European School. Already before 1945 she had had the initial forms of a grotesque figure, consisting of only a head, hands and an upper body, which was now simplified into one elementary form, a ball head, taking on various roles: the saviour, a prophet, fisherman, one of the Fates, a widow. Also in these figures, she often painted self-portraits, in which, instead of similarities, attributes served as means of identification. Later she changed her early tempera technique into oil, the colours applied became harsher and more strident. Her paintings, resembling the simplicity of children’s drawings, but at the same time bearing an elementary force and impressionable by the archaic layers of folk art and culture, had their roots back in Vajda’s and Korniss’ programme in Szentendre; they gained reinforcement from the tradition chosen by the European School, and agreed with the approach of the COBRA-group. After the closure of the European School, she was for a long time not given opportunity for one-man shows, she was silent between 1948 and 1953. When she resumed work, dolls, puppets and clowns came back as her main figures. She also painted narrative pictures, inspired by literary works. By the end of the 1950s, to accompany the puppet theme, was born a cluster of lyrical pieces, reviving secession and the figures of Gulácsy, using more restrained colours, some of which pictures were drawn in charcoal on canvas. She kept her interest in folk art and in city folklore, however it underwent some change, leading from potato-women and gourd-figures to modern daub. Both her mode of painting and her themes approached the grotesque, her way of looking at things bore characteristics of both surrealism and expressive arts. Her biblical pictures were inspired by the themes of popular imagery, market merchandise, glass paintings and “servant folklore”. The Jewish religion and traditions had appeared already in her pre-war works, though hidden at the time, while from the late-1960s she painted them clear-cut and easily recognisable. Her pictures of the 1970s were dominated by naive, conscious primitivism, dauby objects and photos stuck into the paintings, and extraordinary colourfulness. Her interest in folk art regained its timeliness at the time of the rediscovery of the dance hall movement and people’s culture. She expressed family and historic tragedies in puppets. Between the late-1970s and her death she treated the topics of war, Jewishness, widowhood and loneliness, with ironic, grotesque, evil and demonic tones, in her pictures saturated with ambivalence. She continues painting self portraits, which sometimes transformed into metaphors or allegories. She delineated her own deforming body and the stages preceding passing, her pictures became more and more bitter in their tone, which was reinforced by their telling titles and the messages written at the back of the canvas. Her works are kept in significant private and public collections, including the Hungarian National G., the Janus Pannonius Museum in Pécs, the Ferenczy Museum in Szentendre, and the Margit Anna-Imre Ámos Memorial House opened in 1984 in the same town. One-man shows: 1948: The XXXVIII. exhibition of the European School; 1968: Ernst M. (catalogue); 1970: JPM, Pécs; 1974: Helikon G.; 1978: Műcsarnok; 1982: Bartók B. Műv. H., Szeged; 1983: MNG (catalogue); 1984: G. Kara, Genf; 1987: Fészek G.; 1988: Műhely G., Szentendre; 1989: Kunstbetrieb, Dachau (catalogue). Selected group exhibitions: 1934: Munkácsy Guild; 1936: KUT, Nemzeti Szalon; 1936: Imre Ámos, Margit Anna, Tibor Gertler and Th. Heine, Ernst M.; 1942: Liberty and the nation, Szocialista Képzőművészek Csoportja; 1944: New Romantics, Tamás G.; 1956: Six painters, Keresztény M., Esztergom; 1958: Les Partenaires, Párizs; 1969: Margit Anna and Imre Ámos, Damjanich M., Szolnok; 1969: Szentendre art, Csók Képtár, Szfvár; 1976: Szentendre art, MNG; 1987: The „old” avantgarde – 8 Szentendre artists, Műhely G., Szentendre; 1988: Second Wave of the Hungarian Avantgarde, Kövesdy G., New York; 1990: Margit Anna and Imre Ámos, Vigadó G. Further reading: E. Kállai: ~, Jövendő, 21st March 1946; Á. Mezei: ~, MŰV, 1967/1.; Á. Mezei: (catalogue, introductory study, Ernst M., 1968); S. Mándy: ~, Magyar Műhely, VII/25., 15th January 1968; B. Horgas: ~’s pictures, Valóság, XI/8., 1968; L. Németh: Current Exhibitions (in it about ~), NHQ, 1968 Winter; K. S. NAGY: ~ (monograph), Bp., 1971; K. Dávid: ~ (monograph), Bp., 1980; É. Körner: (catalogue, introductory study, MNG, 1983); „Ich kann die Traurigkeit aus nur hinausmalen”, Bericht von Peter Meleghy, Art, Das Kunstmagazin, February 1985.
(Turai, Hedvig)
