Hungarian body – Buddhist soul
The mystery of India in the paintings of the two Brunners
MúzeumCafé 22.
It could be difficult to find a spiritual bond and instinctive attraction between too very distant cultures as those of Hungary and India, yet the intellectual tie that can be seen in the lives and works of several Hungarian artists, historians and archaeologists is very strong – Sándor Kőrösi Csoma, Aurél Stein, Károly Fábri, Sher-Gil Amrita or Erzsébet Sass Brunner and her daughter Erzsébet Brunner. The life and art of Erzsébet Sass Brunner and her daughter almost entirely amalgamated with the culture of India. Mahatma Gandhi said he couldn’t judge their paintings technically, yet their pictures clearly reflected their deep and sincere love for the people of India. Although they mostly lived and worked in India, they bequeathed more than 2000 of their works to the Arts Centre of Nagykanizsa and the Hopp Ferenc Museum of Far-Eastern Art. The last consignment containing their paintings in addition to photographs, negatives, postcards, cameras and their awards arrived in Nagykanizsa a year ago and is awaiting processing. Who were these two artists who had very special lives? Erzsébet Farkas was born in Nagykanizsa in 1889. She went to Ferenc Sass Brunner’s art school and finished her studies hardly two years later as the master’s spouse. From that time the young artist started to sign her work Mrs. Böske Sass Farkas (or abbreviated to SFB). However, she soon became estranged from her husband and mentor. She died of pneumonia in India in 1950. Her daughter mourned her for long, then continued painting portraits which was her speciality. Her images of children, men and women radiate the intrinsic charm of that distant world. Between 1955 and 1957 she painted several places of worship in India. In 1959 she met the Dalai Lama. She died in New Delhi in 2001.