Rescuing, preserving and creating value
Journalist Tamás Kárpáti on his collection of Hungaricons
MúzeumCafé 41.
His home reflects his passion: the garden, the patio and the house are all scenes of his private mythology as he calls it. Initially Tamás Kárpáti gave presents by collecting pictures of apples for his daughter Alma (apple in English) and images of clowns for his son. Interviewees who became friends painted works for him and friends gave him works of art and objects. The expanding collection inspired Kárpáti to engage in deliberate collecting. He had the idea of including ephemeral objects and thus Hungar-icons were created – objects of noted people in works of art by contemporary artists. The collection, now comprising 102 works, answers these questions. It has been exhibited in Hungary and abroad on several occasions. As a result, relics from prominent foreign people followed and Euro-icons and Worldicons have been created. Tamás Kárpáti has even been invited to take his collection to Expo Milan 2015. As a young journalist he often interviewed elderly artists, such as Károly Reich, Jenő Barcsay and Amerigo Tot. Tot made a drawing of three apples for his daughter Alma, which was the first piece in the collection. Serious collecting began later with ‘Masters’ Brushes’, i.e. tools artists had used. The collection was augmented by acquiring József Rippl-Rónai’s crayon and a drawing in chalk, then brushes of Aurél Bernáth, Gyula Hincz and Pál C. Molnár, the quill of Miklós Borsos and Tamás Hencze’s paint roller. Yet many objects were not included in the selection and no painting was found to incorporate Jenő Barcsay’s brush. In order to preserve it Tamás Kárpáti asked László Fehér, a Barcsay student, to include the master’s brush in a composition. Thus the first work of the future Hungaricon collection was created and the writer Péter Nádas wrote a nice text to accompany it.