Activism-Vienna-Berlin-Bauhaus
The Hungarian activist movement that emerged in the 1910s was very much opposed to war. The periodical A Tett, edited by Lajos Kassák, was mostly concerned with literary and political matters. It was banned in October 1916, and its successor, MA, placed more of its focus on the visual arts. Similar to the Der Sturm gallery in Berlin, MA also opened an own exhibition hall in Budapest. János Mattis Teutsch of Brasov, Romania, exhibited at the first show in 1917, while the demonstrative exhibition held in 1918 was attended by every significant figure of Hungarian activism. The brutally raw landscapes and paintings of stout nudes by József Nemes Lampérth demonstrate his expressive approach. The figural charcoal drawings Béla Uitz produced on wrapping paper emanate powerful effects of light and shade. Sándor Bortnyik composed cubist-influenced prints and drawings, and he also designed most of the covers for publications issued by MA. Formerly one of the Eight, Lajos Tihanyi continued his series of intellectually sensitive portraits of significant members of the Hungarian intelligentsia. The cultural events organised by MA were key venues for disseminating modern art. Their policy had the objective of opening up all of culture to as broad a cross-section of society as possible.
After the fall of the Hungarian Republic of Councils in 1919, the majority of the committed intelligentsia had to flee abroad. The centre of avant-garde art, with Kassák at its core, moved to Vienna. In May 1920, Kassák relaunched MA, which came to occupy a respectable position among international art magazines. With the collaboration of two correspondents in Berlin, László Moholy-Nagy and Ernő Kállai, the periodical devoted space to contemporary art practices and theoretical writings. Kassák himself took up painting, mostly planar-geometric compositions inspired by Russian constructivism, which Kassák called "pictorial architectures". Moholy-Nagy’s experiments in art were noticed by Walter Gropius, who offered the Hungarian expatriate the job of teaching the preparatory course at the Bauhaus, before appointing him head of the school's metals workshop. Quite a number of Hungarian artists studied at the Bauhaus school (among them were Sándor Bortnyik, Farkas Molnár, Gyula Pap, Henrik Stefán, Hugó Johan, Andor Weininger, and Marcel Breuer, who later found world fame with his invention of tubular steel furniture.) Some of the Hungarian artists whose works were exhibited at the Der Sturm gallery in Berlin represented the constructive approach to geometric abstraction (Sándor Bortnyik, Lajos Kassák, László Péri, László Moholy-Nagy), while others were more closely connected to the decorativeness of late expressionism (Béla Kádár, Hugó Scheiber, Armand Schönberger).
Modern Times
