Magyar Ifjúság [Hungarian Youth], issue 33. 9 August 1974
The parish did not have the funds to maintain and renovate the building. The local council did not have any plans for the use of either the building or its surroundings.
But then, a few years ago, a young fine artist, György Galántai, discovered this place.
(György Galántai’s reply)
[...]
First it looked like the beginning of something good. But then the whole thing gradually slipped out of Galántai’s control, the man whose idea this project was but whose initial gusto in organising and directing the project and the energy it required were only sufficient to get things going. He was inexperienced, and also naïve, a kind of person who had definite, albeit not fully developed, principles about art. What eventually happened was all but inevitable. Last year the area around the chapel upon the hill was ‘conquered’ by rather dubious characters, loafing young people and undesirable individuals, including Western citizens. Scenes scandalising and repelling the local population, the tourists and holidaymakers who visited the chapel became an everyday occurrence.
The local council warned Galántai several times, although he had long lost control over the events, moreover, sometimes he was often away for days on end. In the end, it became a police matter and Galántai’s lease was terminated through court action; thus the artists’ colony envisioned on top of the hill in Balatonboglár met an inglorious end.
It was crying over spilt milk, but some milk was still left in the jug when the summer season in 1973 was over and the local and county councils made efforts to turn things right, especially considering that they had earlier failed to check what they had given permission for and had allowed an initially nice idea to turn nasty.
Now it would be difficult to investigate who thought of steering this fundamentally excellent idea into legal waters. In any case, within a surprisingly short time the funds and building capacity were raised for the complete renovation of the interior and the exterior of the chapel. [...] It was as if they wanted to make up for the previous oversight and lack of action, and everyone who had anything to do with this matter was working with amazing dedication and enthusiasm. One cannot but think that a fraction of this energy would have been sufficient earlier – if it had been timed right and had been available continuously – to avoid the scandalous end of the story, or, figuratively speaking, to cut out the gangrene.
[...]
“We have more plans for this area,” said László Kocsis, the vice-president of the county council. “Next year we’ll have new exhibition material displayed every three weeks. We want to establish a sculpture park with original artworks. We will renovate the lower chapel, which is located barely one hundred metres away and is in a bad state of repair; it will be a new exhibition venue. In five years’ time, people will be able to come here and pursue their creative impulses. What we have in mind is an open-air sculpture workshop mainly for artists who work with wood, and not only Hungarians. And we were thinking of other ideas too. We want this hill to be a place not of scandals but artistic experiences. We signed a 25-year lease with the parish for this area and, with the help of the Association of Hungarian Fine Artists, we want to turn Balatonboglár into a real art centre.
A very nice idea and, judging from the initial enthusiasm, we have every hope that it will be realised.
I am looking at the old tombstones, fallen and sunken into the ground. Only two words can be read of the blurry epitath on one of them “Fiat Pax”. There is a blank space left after it. Perhaps it could be added: “Et Ars”.
Let here be peace.
And art.
István Takács