ISTVAN CSÓK GALLERY

Kunó Klebelsberg and Tibor Gerevich put a huge emphasis in their cultural policy in the 20’s on the education of young artists abroad. Between 1928-30 the Italy-oriented Tibor Gerevich, the curator of the Hungarian Academy of Rome invited Vilmos Aba Novák to the Italian capital. The aim of the invitation was to get a clear an excellent taste after seeing the art of Rome and Italy. Parallel with the modern Italian ambitions, the historical approach of Neoclassicism had appeared in Hungary as well. The government wanted to represent and familiarize the Hungarian art with its official support in Europe.

Vilmos Aba-NovákAba Novák’s star began to rise in the beginning of the 30’s after assignments from the Hungarian state and his international success. Soon, he has turned into one of the most employed master of his age. 1932 in Padua, he won a gold medal on the exhibition of religious art, in the following year he received his initial order. It was the painting of the frescos of the Jászszentandrás church. In the same year, he received a gold medal from the Hungarian state. He got the assignment in 1936 for painting the frescos of the Szegedi Hősök Kapuja (Hero’s Gate in Szeged) and the garden ruins mausoleum in Székesfehérvár. Aba Novák painted his panneau “Hungarian-French Historical Connections” in 1937 to the Expo of Paris. After the conclusion of peace in Trianon (FR), Hungary went to an Expo for the first time. Europe could realise this as a political message because Hungary sent artists to the Expo from the Roman School. Vilmos Aba Novák was an outstanding master of the monumental genres; he depicted events from the Hungarian-French historical connections on his panneau like a movie. Like in a newsreel, the brown scenes are following each other on his masterpiece. He lifted the important themes out, than he wrote linking sentences between the events and pictures. This work achieved a huge success in Paris; the jury awarded Aba Novák with a Grand Prix. Thanks to this, the sizes of the great hall of the István Csók Gallery and the County Library were set to this panneau. In 1944, after finishing the building the panneaus could not get to their intended places.