Spring

Struggling, clinging, scrabbling, but we all feel that this winter will soon be over. Slowly the snowdrops and the goldenrod come, the buds burst, little by little the migratory birds return (and here's hoping that the brandy trees don't freeze...Although astronomically we can only say "It's spring!" from March 21, the "awakening" and rebirth of nature, people, animals and plants is an inescapable theme at the beginning of the month.
We are lucky to have the Carpathian Basin as our home, because we can enjoy the beauty of all the seasons, and for many, spring is the most beautiful of all.

With the arrival of the new season, we can feel the general improvement in our mood, and that of our fellow human beings. It's time to start cleaning, sorting, tidying up gardens and other preparations (but our regular customers already know that this should not be at the expense of our weekend exhibitions!).

In our current post we are dealing with the spring, we would like to present the blossoming and renewal we can feel in the Vándorfény Gallery, which we can thank both our creative community and our small team. Moreover, we are in the unique position that, due to the nature of the artworks, this season and its positive, soul-warming effect is always present in our exhibitions and in our gallery.Of course, we don't appropriate all this, in fact! Our aim is for you to experience it in your own home, so we can only encourage our readers to buy the art!)

Any decent review will look back to Roman times. Well, for the ancient Romans, March was the first month of the year, and the beginning of the New Year coincided with the Ides of March. The god of Mars, by the way, used to celebrate military festivities. The April ceremonies had a completely different purpose, because it was a month of fertility: they were celebrated and sacrifices were made for the abundant harvest of grain, the reproduction of livestock and the reproductive capacity of women. May was a time of subsequent growth and anxiety about the harvest, with atonement ceremonies, fasting and various prohibitions (such as marriage).

With a little jump in time and space, let's take a look at the main spring traditions in Hungarian folklore and Christian festivals. The old name for the month of March is fasting month (our annual desk calendar, you can find a wealth of works and biographies, as well as), which means that it is the second month of the forty-day Lent, which begins on Ash Wednesday and is a time of religious reflection. On Palm Sunday we commemorate Jesus' final entry into Jerusalem. To commemorate this, a baptism of Bark is celebrated with a procession. According to popular tradition, the procession of the bark is held on Palm Sunday, during which girls dress a straw doll in women's clothes, carry it through the village and throw it into water or burn it. The well-known song "Boo, boo, green branch" is also originally a folk tradition following the planting of a green branch, a song of carrying or forking green branches. It is also an old folk tradition to put up a maypole. The tree, decorated with ribbons, is mainly set up by the suitor for the girl, but sometimes the community has its own maypole.

Spring is a favourite theme of Hungarian lyric poetry, inspiring many poets, including Mihály Csokonai Vitéz, Sándor Petőfi, Endre Ady, Mihály Babits, Attila József, Miklós Radnóti, Sándor Kányádi; but it was mainly the representatives of impressionist mood lyrics - Gyula Juhász, Dezső Kosztolányi, Árpád Tóth and Lajos Áprily - who favoured the ancient topos.

Let's take a look at how this time of year is represented in painting, paddling our own waters. Sandro Botticelli's 15th-century work Primavera is a highlight, depicting a Roman mythological scene from the Renaissance with Venus and Flora, the goddess of spring, swaying flowers. (Floralia was the ancient Roman celebration of spring, held in April-May, with flowers and dancing in the spirit of renewal.) The harmony, elegance and beauty of the picture make it a true masterpiece. Its interpretation is still disputed (it is interpreted as an allegory of fertility, of the lush growth of spring, but also as an expression of the Neoplatonic idea of love), and it is not clear for what occasion it was painted; some explain it as an allegory of the love of Giuliano de Medici and Simonetta Vespucci or of the death of Simonetta. The garden and Flora's dress, which is completely unshaded and suggestive of eternity, are adorned with countless flowers; some five hundred species of plants have been identified in the painting, including one hundred and ninety species of flowers.

Among Hungarian painters, Károly Lotz also created his cycle of seasons. The allegory of spring is a painting on a mythological theme with the aforementioned Flora, who is typically depicted scattering flowers.

He was fond of allegorical figures, exemplified by the wall paintings of the Hungarian National Museum, among others. His pupil István Csók, and more generally the impressionists of the turn of the century, József Rippl-Rónai or Lajos Kunffy, often painted and used the symbolism of spring as a tool.

We are now at the home stretch, it is time to talk about the rich material of our own artists!

Still life, landscapes, and relevant life and religious images (Easter) are a rewarding theme for the season.
Thousands of spring-inspired works by more than 150 artists abound.
Without claiming completeness, we can think here of Attila Boros's loving prints and oil paintings;
To the lovely, spring-like daughters of László Budai;
Zoltán Kárpáti's blushing, beautiful female figures;
Angéla Micsik's songbirds of spring ;
The fragrant flowers of Taras Tabaka;
and of course the captivating landscapes of Zoltán Benda and Attila Endrey-Nagy

On this link https://www.vandorfeny.hu/muveszek you can choose from a selection of other artists or use our thematic filters (at the bottom of our main page) to search for still life, landscape, etc.

We look forward to seeing you again in the spring in our downtown gallery and at our travelling exhibitions around the country!