CSONTVÁRY
ART STUDIO
Foster home, Pécs
7621 Pécs, Megye u. 24.
HUNGARY
Phone: 0036-72-311-206
INTRODUCTION
The Csontváry
Art Studio was formed in 1987 in Pécs, Hungary. Its members are
children aged 5-18 who are brought up by the State, because their
parents either denied then not wanting to take care of
their own children or were simply unable to take care of them due
to bad social and economical background of the family. These
children spend their childhood in a state institution instead of
a loving home. However much love and attention are given to them
by the teachers and the staff, they obviously cannot make up for
the parents, and the institution cannot make up for a home of
someone's own.
Art therefore
means a certain way of life for these children. It helps them to
develop and form their personalities, to widen their intellectual
horizon. Through creating art they can articulate their hopes and
their desires, they can express the traumas and anguish they have
had to go through. The work they do in the Studio and the
exhibitions can provide them with a feeling of being successful
and accepted by the society. Art therefore is almost like a
therapy for them.
The work of the
group is based on several trends of art from the classical
Far-Eastern Chinese and Japanese art up to Surrealism, especially
on the works of Miro, Klee, Max Ernst, Dalí and Kandinski. Apart
from these the symbols of Hungarian folk art, the primitive arts
and ancient mythologies are also studied. In these days the
Studio is studying how the ancient pagan beliefs of Hungarian
pre-Christian people have survived through folk art like tales,
rhymes, etc. and how these beliefs have been mixed with and
transformed by popular Christian tradition amongst the common
people. The drawings of children are myths themselves. Both their
drawings and their thoughts connected to their pictures are in
fact symbolic models of their own lives and problems. By the
expression of the stories through their specific internal view
the children of the Studio create a special subculture and
therefore a style characteristic to the group.
Parallel with the
artistic studies there is also a scientific project going on in
the Studio. It studies the system of symbols used in the drawings
of children and the distortion of these symbols due to emotional
traumas.
The Studio
often has exhibitions from their works in Pécs, around Pécs in
smaller towns, in Budapest and there was one in Kassel, Germany
as well.
István PLATTHY
art director