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KASSÁK, Lajos Painter, Typographer, Poet, Writer (Érsekújvár, 21st March, 1887 – Budapest 22nd July, 1967) From the 1910’s till the turn of the 1930’s, then for a short period following the year of 1945, Kassák was the main figure of the Hungarian Avante-Garde movement as a poet, writer, editor, periodical founder, movement coordinator and ideologist. He worked in a number of fields within the genres of the visual arts, from typography to painted wooden relief works, as well as preparing graphical works, collages, photomontages and paintings. At home in Hungary he became the idol of clear intellectuality. In 1947 he received the Baumgarten Award; 1948: Kossuth Merit of Honor; 1965: Kossuth Award (for his literary work); 1967: Golden Work Merit. Kassák moved to Budapest in 1904, and began working as a metalworker. It was during this time that he became acquainted with the workers movement. Between the years of 1909 and 1910 he traveled Western Europe extensively, spending some time in Paris. His poems were regularly published in the Hungarian daily entitled Független Magyarország /Independent Hungary/ from the year of 1909. In 1915 he founded his own paper entitled TETT /ACT/, with which he began his activities as a conductor and organizer of literary and fine arts activities. In the 10th issue of TETT he published his program, his address against the existing social system existent at the time. Within it he demanded a special agitative role for the arts and stressed their social responsibilities. His main artistic partner was Béla Uitz. Following the banning of the TETT in the year of 1916, he began publishing his activist periodical entitled MA (TODAY). He organized a number of exhibitions of the works of artists that he discovered at the editorial offices of the MA located in Váci Street and Visegrádi Street, in Budapest. Besides Béla Uitz artsist such as Lajos Tihanyi, Sándor Bortnyik, Pál Pátzay as well as Lajos Gulácsy, Ede Bohacsek, János Schadl, Péter Dobrovits, and the Galimbertis works were exhibited. In 1919 he was a member of the writer’s directorate. After the fall of the Republic he was sentenced to prison, after which he emigrated to Vienna, from where he continued to publish MA, up until his return to Hungary in the year of 1926. During the course of the 1920’s Kassák coined the term Képarchitectúra /Bildatchitektur, i.e. Image-Architecture/, thus joining into the mainstream Avant-Garde movement of the time, which attempted to bring forth the term and image vocabulary of the period. His great prototypes were the Russians, especially Malevics and Tatlin. In contradiction to their strictly formed imagery structures (in which forms, strength-lines and colors had their equivalents in notions) Kassák made the notions, or conceptions the starting points of his image-architectures, they constituted visual analogies of his poetic formulations. In his publication published in 1925, entitled Tisztaság Könyv /Book of Cleanliness/ his numbered poetical writings were published together with his image-architectures. During the course of the 1920’s Kassák’s art went though a number of changes, ranging from dadaist effects though pragmatic constructivism; most of his works prepared during the course of this period were of small size. At the time of his return home between 1926 and 1927, he was the editor of the Dokumentum /Document/, a political, social and arts periodical, which published four issues all together. Then in the year of 1928 he began publishing his new periodical entitled Munka /Work/, which hardly differed form the freedom of thought mentality of the Free democrats, and was banned in 1939. The Munka group was composed of painters writers and workers such as István Vas, Dezső Korniss, Lajos Lengyel, Lajos Vajda;< Ernő Schubert, and Sándor Trauner. At the invitation of Imre Pál and Árpád Mezei he was one of the founding members of the Európai Iskola /European School/, though the mainly surrealist mentality of the movement was unfamiliar for him. Between 1945 and 1949 he the vice president of the Hungarian Arts Council, and the editor of the periodicals entitled Új Idők /New Times/, the Kortárs /Contemporary/, and the Alkotás /Creation/. In 1947 he undertook being a Free-Democrat representative. In 1949 he was forced into internal exile, his works couldn’t be published. Between 1946 and 1954 he lived in Békásmegyer, a suburb region of Budapest, where at the encouragement of his neighbor Jenő Gadányi he began drawing again. He prepared Ink drawings, which were the representations of the underlining forces and energies present in nature, after which he began painting landscapes with reduced compositions. From 1956 he retuned to public life. The international “reincarnation” of the Avant-Garde movements of the 1920’s rediscovered Kassák’s works as well; exhibitions of his works were opened around the world. Main enthusiasts of his early abstract works were René Denise, who had worked together with Vasarely, and the Gmurzynska Gallery of Cologne. He participated at the Grand Dadaist exhibition held between 1966 and 1967 in Paris with 15 of his own works. Kassák revived his earlier, forgotten works, and once again began working on large scale non-figurative works. His later works were constituted of more lyrical abstractions, far reaching, yet quite personal confessions. The Kassák, who had started off as an ultra modernist, gave up his modernism, exactly when it began to assert itself. In 1967, just before his death he organized his first collective exhibition at the Adolf Fényes Gallery, which was listed in the so-called ‘tolerated’ category, therefore he would have had to pay the fees related to the exhibition, however these were latter remitted. The Kassák Memorial Museum founded from his estate, founded in 1976, constitutes a permanent exhibition of his works. (translated by: Vladimir Végh)