Missing Pieces Part II: Csontváry & Gedeon Gerlóczy
3 Galamb Street, Budapest, in the architect Gedeon Gerloczy’s apartment, Gloria Gerloczy standing beside Csontvary’s 1907 masterpiece Pilgrimage to the Cedars of Lebanon & View of the Selmec Mine, 1902, image courtesy FORTEPAN/ Tamas Urban, 1979
March 2018
Every artist needs a patron, someone to champion their work, to convince the world that here is someone worth their time. For Csontváry who was spectacularly unsuccessful in his lifetime, that man arrived in 1919, the year that the great master died. Csontváry’s family had decided to auction off his large-scale paintings, as the canvases he’d used were made from expensive Belgian linen and could be sold to freighters for re-use as tarpaulins. A young architect from Budapest named Gedeon Gerlóczy had seen the master’s work and recognised its genius. On the day of the auction he bought 42 Csontváry paintings, and in so doing Gerlóczy single-handedly salvaged the work of the greatest Hungarian painter from oblivion.
Gedeon Gerloczy in his apartment at 3 Galamb Street, Budapest, circa 1960s, the bottom edge of Csontvary’s The Lonely Cedar is visible, image courtesy FORTEPAN/Tamas Urban, 1979
It was Gerlóczy who would be not only the keeper of Csontváry’s work for over half a century, but the painter’s unstinting champion too. In 1930, eleven years after his death, Csontváry had his first solo show. It was at the Ernst Museum, smack bang in the centre of the capital, just where the artist had always believed he belonged. Six years later another show. Then war, then Fascists, then Communists. In 1946, there were two exhibitions, this time in the Hungarian Communist Party building in Paris and in Brussels. 12 years later, in 1958, Csontváry’s painting Riders by the Seashore (1909) was exhibited at the Brussels Expo in an exhibition entitled “50 Years of Modern Art”. In an unprecedented move, art from the Soviet Union and from other Communist countries was exhibited alongside artists from Western Europe. Csontváry won a prize. Below is a link from the MoMA website about this ground-breaking exhibition, but sadly there is no mention of Csontváry: http://post.at.moma.org/content_items/1072-reluctantly-global-fifty-years-of-modern-art-at-the-1958-brussels-expo. Two more exhibitions followed, another in Brussels at the Palais de Beaux-Arts (1962), and then in Budapest at the Museum of Fine Arts (1963).
Gloria Gerloczy sitting in front of The Lonely Cedar in their apartment at 3 Galamb Street, Budapest, circa 1960s, image courtesy FORTEPAN/Tamas Urban, 1979
All this time, those 42 Csontváry paintings were still in the apartment of the architect Gedeon Gerlóczy, at number 3 Galamb Street in Budapest. Even today this is one of the busiest parts of the city, but back then it was far worse. Outside smog-spewing Commie cars came and went all day. Inside, in the building where Gerlóczy lived, the residents still used tile stoves. Soot, fumes, dust and pollution abounded. The paintings were filthy and badly in need of extensive restoration. Then in the summer of 1975, Csontváry’s champion died, but a lifetime of effort to have his hero recognised was about to pay off. The time was right. The hegemony of Social Realist art was on the decline. People were fed up with state sanctioned art. Here was a true Magyar spirit, untainted by Soviet propaganda, with a transcendental message of hope for his oppressed people.
The picture in this blog was taken in 1975, when the collection really began to take its rightful place in Hungarian art history. In the picture is Gerlóczy’s daughter Glória. Behind it is the other famous cedar painting by Csontváry called “Pilgrimage to the Cedars of Lebanon”, painted in 1907, the same year as “The Lonely Cedar”. To see it there like this, squeezed between two other paintings, cramped into this utterly ordinary, dark, airless little room, one can only be grateful that the paintings were saved from total ruin.
Two more Csontvary masterpieces squeezed onto the walls of the Gerloczy apartment at 3 Galamb Street, Budapest. On the left Storm Over the Great Hortobagy, 1903, and on the right Horse Ride by the Sea, 1909, image courtesy FORTEPAN/Tamas Urban, 1979
In late 2015, I had the good fortune to meet Gippert László, Director of Restoration at the Hungarian National Museum. He told me that he was there that autumn day in 1975 when the television crew jammed into the widow Gerlóczy’s apartment to film those treasures. He also told me that he got the guys from the tv crew to tell Madame Gerlóczy that they were hungry and to ask for some bread and butter. And then, when the old lady’s back was turned he smeared that good, shiny butter straight onto “The Lonely Cedar”. Apparently it was so dirty that the cameras could barely make out the trunk of the tree.
More than half a century after Gerlóczy saved Csontváry from oblivion, the master finally got his own museum. But it was a compromise as the museum is in Pécs, 200 kilometres south-west of the capital. Even today there are plans afoot to re-locate his museum to Budapest where it rightfully belongs. Csontváry is still virtually unknown outside of Hungary.
I’d like to end with two quotes taken from Csontváry’s writings. The first is about the artist’s vision for himself. His extraordinary self-belief in the face of so many odds continues to inspire. The second is about peace. ◊
“…come what may, I am not afraid of the enormous task to be undertaken; my health is good, my will indomitable, and as to persistancy, I am prepared to outdo the ant; I know myself well and shall never be disappointed: I believe that originality and poetry will be my friends, because my soul and heart desire only what is real and the smallest particle of nature fills me with enthusiasm.”
Csontvary, Self-portrait, circa 1893, © Csontvary Foundation, oil on canvas, photograph wikimedia.com
“The truth is that in the fifth or sixth millennium the mature cedars are sent to rest, while the younger ones are encouraged to grow. They live together in one forest and do not encroach upon one another, but exist in peace in the midst of the vicissitudes of time, through the providence of God and nature. Why can we not live together in such peaceful harmony in Europe? Throughout Europe we must turn away from material problems and find our true values in the spiritual realm.”