Birthday messages and memories on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Júlia Klaniczay, co-founder of Artpool
Orsolya Mácsadi
On Júlia Klaniczay’s 70th birthday
Júlia Klaniczay, researcher, editor and artist
It all started in October 2021, when I was looking for material for the exhibition titled Broken Progression as a new employee and assistant curator for the Szombathely Gallery. This temporary exhibition was set up within the framework of the Hungarian Genius Project with its subjects being the study of Hungarian music, architecture, fine arts, applied arts and textile art in the period 1968-75 primarily from an historical perspective, in the context of the specific cultural policy of the time.
Since I gained my professional experience in the Fine Arts and Storno Collections of the Museum of Sopron, this period of 20th-century Hungarian art opened up a new and exciting area for me.
During my research, I came across Júlia Klaniczay’s name and the Artpool Art Research Center through Csilla Bényi’s publication of 2002. Júlia Klaniczay helped me contact what was Artpool’s Research Department at the time and Emese Kürti, its department head. During my visit to the institution and further research, I was able to learn about the history of a special collection, a former apartment archive and an international network encompassing the wide world. I was extremely impressed by the huge amount of material, which was then still mostly unresearched, and which had weathered the adverse storms of the era of the 3Ts in Hungarian art at the bottom of “the barge of avant-garde art.”
Part of Broken Progression portrayed the events of the Balatonboglár Chapel Studio. Juli even helped me to proofread and correct the wall captions. I got to know a woman who didn’t just take responsibility for Artpool but has been dedicated to helping it along, sparing neither time, nor energy.
Our joint work didn’t end there. It was also while selecting the material for Broken Progression that I noticed a special piece from the Textile Collection of the Szombathely Gallery: György Galántai’s installation called The Clothes Make the Man. The work was made in 1981 in the artists’ workshop in Velem, where György Galántai and Júlia Klaniczay worked together. The pictures used for the works made in Velem, which recorded scenes from several performances they did together, faithfully reflect Júlia’s artistic creed, courageous commitment and humility to avant-garde art and the life of an artist. Thanks to her contribution, she became one of the founders of the Mukhina Project, a piece of its living sculpture and a ‘brick’ of its creative concept. I cannot thank you enough for your help in drawing up the text, which established the connection between the Szombathely Gallery of the Savaria Museum and the Artpool Art Research Center, and contributed to the study, published in the volume Opus Mixtum of the 8th Conference of Young Art Historians, which placed important Galántai works in a new scientific context.
Dear Juli, May God keep you strong and healthy. Thank you for everything.
Lots of love:
Orsi Mácsadi
(2024)
