Hungarian Sculpture of the Late Twentieth Century. At the Intersection of Romanticism and Pop Art

Abstract

Developing intensively and in its own way throughout the 20th century, Hungarian sculpture has gained recognition as one of the leading European schools. Much in its creative image was determined between the two world wars when romantic tonality, combining dynamic activity and plastic flexibility, became a high priority. Romantic pantheism made itself felt in the artistic works of the Hungarians, successfullyshown at the All-Union Art Exhibition in Moscow in 1957-1958. The appeal to the motives and forms of nature enriched the human modulus of Hungarian sculpture.The period between 1960-1970 is its most fruitful time. The combination of romantic concepts and themes with object textures and aesthetics of simplicity, inherent in pop art, among the masters of the older generation, Imre Varga and Erzsébet Schaár who were recognized in Europe, was the biggest event among the variants of its creative movement. Imre Varga’s evolution in this direction, from grotesque-naturalistic publicism to the use of pop art techniques as a means of the dramatic theatricalization of human life and history, is illustrated in the article. Varga developed a synthesis of the pop art-inspired landscape and romantic portrait in the best monuments of these decades. In Erzsébet Schaár’s art, the objective world more than once turned into an artistic metaphor of independent significance. However, for her, the most important meeting of romanticism and pop art happened, the same as for Varga, in the search for synthesis and the creation of an ensemble. Her Street, which is exhibited in the city of Pecs, is perceived as a combination of symbolic figures and environmental objects, imbued with the idea of infinity of the world.