Two artists, two destinies, two towns
Oeuvres of Tibor Jankay and Ferenc Bolmányi in Békéscsaba and Orosháza
MúzeumCafé 40.
The exhibition Friends from Békéscsaba opened in the 2B Gallery, Budapest in autumn 2011. It was perhaps the only attempt to jointly present works by the two painters. Then in November 2013 the Mihály Mun-kácsy Museum in Békéscsaba opened the permanent exhibition of the Jankay–Kolozsváry–Tevan Collection. The museum thus gained a European-standard collection. Ferenc Bolmányi’s oeuvre also got to the town following an exhibition in Orosháza in 1989, where it was displayed in circumstances not matching its significance. The two artists’ first exhibitions were held in Békéscsaba’s ‘Palace of Culture’ and this was followed by visits abroad. From 1938 their destinies were similar – forced labour until 1944. In that year Jankay escaped from a train heading from the Nagyvárad ghetto to Auschwitz. Bolmányi was entrained in Budapest, but the transport could not set off since the city was surrounded. After World War II their lives continued in different locations. Jankay moved to the US in 1948, while Bolmányi tried to continue working in Hungary under changing circumstances. Jankay worked in a calm, peaceful world. He was a professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu. Following much difficulty and struggle, by the mid 1980s Bolmányi had become a living classic in Hungary. Marking his 80th birthday, the Ernst Museum staged a retrospective exhibition. displaying 160 works in 1984. There are many similarities in the two artists’ lives, yet there are quite a few differences. The works which remained in Hungary and those that have come back are geographically close today, but to what extent will they enter the artistic canon which their standard deserves?