Space Marks - Viewing Room

In recent years, much attention has been directed to the art experiments that took place at the Bonyhád Enamel Factory during the late sixties and early seventies. These activities, initiated by Kamill Major and later Ferenc Lantos, took shape in 1968 as the “Architectural Enamel Art Camp” with the participation of Gyula Pauer, Tihamér Gyarmathy and Oszkár Papp. From 1969 to 1972, members of the Pécs Workshop – which had formed from a group of Lantos’s students (Ferenc Ficzek, Károly Hopp-Halász, Károly Kismányoky, Sándor Pinczehelyi, Kálmán Szijártó, and initially Lajos Szelényi) – regularly attended the art camp in Bonyhád (then, from 1970 onwards, in Mecseknádasd). In 1970 and 1972, the list of participants, among others, came to also include such representatives of geometric abstract art as Imre Bak and János Fajó. In interpreting the events that occurred at Bonyhád, significant insights have been gained not only from the shows and publications of the acb Gallery and its exhibition projects in cooperation with the Vasarely Museum and the Janus Pannonius Museum, but also from the exhibitions entitled Separate Ways – Karl-Heinz Adler and Hungarian Abstraction (Kiscelli Museum/Kassák Museum, 2017), and 1971– Parallel Nonsynchronism (Kiscelli Museum, 2018/9). By bringing to the fore the considerations and international aspects that emerged during the memorable "abstraction debate" of the 1960s, these exhibtions have helped outline the context in which linking fine arts with architecture and industry offered abstract art an alternative, and also – in the form of mural works of art – the opportunity to benefit from more permissive climate of cultural policy. This viewing room as as well as the Space Marks research exhibition at acb Attachment  (14 January  – 18 February 2022) seek to nuance the relationship between the Hungarian symposium movement (which began in 1968 and reached its heyday in the 1970s) and the art activities that took place at the Bonyhád Enamel Factory. At the same time, the exhibition is also connected to the history of how these activities at the Bonyhád Factory (relating not only to enamel art) appeared on the avantgarde platforms of the era, thereby outlining the intersection of these two domains. The works on display are selected from the material – conceived mainly in the spirit of geometric abstraction – that members of the former Pécs Workshop (with the exception of Károly Hopp-Halász) submitted in response to a call for works announced in 1971 by art historian László Beke under the title Work = the Documentation of Imagination/Idea, which is regarded as the first collection of Hungarian conceptual art, sheds light on some heterogeneous interpretations of the relationship between art and ideas, based on the works of the artists whom Beke sought out in the early seventies.

The works presented are selected from the material – conceived mainly in the spirit of geometric abstraction – that members of the former Pécs Workshop (with the exception of Károly Hopp-Halász) submitted in response to a call for works announced in 1971 by art historian László Beke under the title The Artwork = the Documentation of the Idea. Imagination/Idea, which is regarded as the first collection of Hungarian conceptual art, sheds light on some heterogeneous interpretations of the relationship between art and ideas, based on the works of the artists whom Beke sought out in the early seventies. In including enamel works and enamel designs tied to the activities in Bonyhád, the material submitted by the Pécs group – as pointed out by Róna Kopeczky, László Százados and Zsóka Leposa – introduced into this collection a kind of functional, but also dynamic, thinking about public space and the natural environment, based on considerations that were modernist but also urbanistic, as inspired by Vasarely’s work. In addition to the variability and seriality inherent in enamel art, its categorisability as applied art also played a particularly important role in this respect. This point is evidenced not only by Lantos’s letter submitted in response to the call, but also by Sándor Pinczehelyi’s semiotics-inspired montages, which question the traditions of commemorative monument building. Ferenc Ficzek’s cube addresses the problem of creating and perceiving space, while also bearing traces of Gyula Pauer’s pseudo and Vasarely’s method built on illusory effects. The work, which was included in the Imagination/Idea material only in the form of a “draft”, can also be brought in connection with this thought, while Ficzek’s spray-painted “imprints” are based on found objects. The chain of thought that connects the initial planning stages of the artwork with experiments in form and medial variations, and, then, with the execution phase, can clearly be traced in the documents entered by Kálmán Szijártó and Károly Kismányoky, a selection of which is presented at the exhibition. The rhythm of their joint land art actions – which were closely related to the artists’ stay in Bonyhád, also bringing to the foreground the ties created between geometric forms and the natural environment – and the element of the paper ribbons woven through the trees and the landscape are also echoed in Kismányoky’s enamel art. Taken together, these reflect back the interconnections between the varied forms arising from the different motifs, genres, techniques, and conceptualisations of space.