The following is an article written by Orsolya Ferenczi-Bónis Magyar Krónika recently visited the renovated former mansion of painter Gyula Benczúr and the interactive exhibition The Picture Writer — Approaches to Gyula Benczúr it houses The exhibition’s central aim is to reveal the artist’s less-known creative side The magazine spoke with curator Evelin Páll to find our more about the building and the great Hungarian painter who owned it The former manor of the painter prince stands on a hilltop above the medieval village of Szécsény Gyula Benczúr bought the small estate with the building on it at the suggestion of his friend Kálmán Mikszáth so that he could spend his summers with his family along the Ipoly river—the tiny settlement was called Dolány it was renamed Benczúrfalva (meaning ‘the village of Benczúr’) The single-storey late Baroque gabled wing of the castle was built by the Wattay family in the 18th century The building later had several owners; Benczúr bought it from the Pejácsevich family Count Endre Pejácsevich had the baroque wing connected with a glazed corridor together with the service rooms and kitchen had the purchased edifice decorated and an old granary converted into a mansard-roofed studio house a few steps away his daughters ran a guesthouse in the mansion shared the fate of a typical Hungarian castle after the world wars a three-year reconstruction project within the scope of the National Palace Programme brought it back to life from this almost incorrigible state The building on top of the park offers a magnificent view of the valley The terraced gardens have been restored by landscape architects to preserve their wild beauty Surrounded by huge trees—century-old yew trees and an old oak named in honour of Rákóczi— we are greeted by photographs of moments in the life of the Benczúr family when entering the edifice based on which the castle’s interiors were reconstructed and a painting were lent to the exhibition by Benczúr’s great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren The glazed corridor connecting the two wings of the manor opens onto the former dining room and the Paletta Café The floor is covered with monochrome Kelheim limestone in various shades a stone popular in 19th-century castles—the restoration has taken great care to use authentic materials was a painter of the ‘glorious period of the Austro–Hungarian Compromise’ He studied with the most renowned teachers at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and after graduating from master school he taught there himself from 1876 to 1883 he was called home by cultural politician Ágoston Trefort to become the director of the first school of painting—until then there had been no higher art education in Hungary but the economic and cultural boom following the Compromise provided the background for the establishment of the institution The exhibition titled The Picture Writer — Approaches to Gyula Benczúr begins with an audio installation that explores the positive and negative criticism of the painter’s art from both the academic and modernist worlds showing what a turbulent and sometimes controversial period he lived through ‘Picture writer’ is the old name for a painter for example when signing a contract of sale of an estate ‘By choosing Gyula Benczúr’s self-definition as the main title of the exhibition we want to draw visitors’ attention to the fact that the exhibition offers new approaches to his oeuvre through a “re-reading” of the works of art and primary written and pictorial sources,’ says curator Evelin Páll The exhibition includes works that also allow us to get to know Benczúr as a private person as well as those that link him to modern painting we first envision his historical paintings such as The Baptism of Vajk (1875) or The Recapture of the Buda Castle in 1686 (1896) and his representative portraits that form a significant part of his oeuvre—but as we walk through the exhibition we can see that Benczúr had many different creative faces we immediately meet not only the official painter Benczúr himself but also the artist who painted moments of intimacy was sensitive to his models and self-portraits and depicted them in a direct way ‘I wanted to nuance the extreme image of the official academic painter,’ explains Evelin Páll Visual experiments of this extraordinary power which overtly portray his inner struggles and anxieties Benczúr hid behind masks as an academic painter a year before his death when he was removed from the head of the master school during the Soviet Republic a particularly interesting choice by Benczúr,’ the curator says in front of the picture ‘Historicism expresses the message of the present by evoking the painterly themes of past ages Benczúr responded to the events of his life by choosing the roles for his self-portraits often twisting the masks until it was difficult to find the simple and fallible man behind them: became a means of distancing himself from himself,’ This approach to existential questions returned in his art again and again—although neither his clients claimed this direction nor did he follow it as an official painter In the whole-wall installation in the Portrait and Representation section we meet the official Benczúr: thirteen important pieces of his representative portrait painting are on display in the form of miniature reproductions as everyone who mattered commissioned portraits from him Benczúr’s representative works for the social public are imbued with both his extraordinary power of characterization and the distancing characteristic of 19th-century academic painting there is an exception here too: in the original portrait of the extravagant I wanted to show the hidden face of Benczúr through works that the painter did not create for the general public,’ continues Evelin Páll and the desperate mother with her children—graphics from the 1870s and 1880s show Benczúr’s sensitivity to social problems ‘The fact that he is best known as a painter of beauty and grandiose national dreams does not mean that as a private man—and in his sketches and visual notes—he was not sensitive to themes of vulnerability These include the original oil paintings of Piroska Boldizsár Ürmössy unlike the representative portraits in the previous room with one or two layers of paint reminiscent of the artist’s oil sketch technique This means that they were made quickly: the immediacy of the paintings confronts the viewer with the drift and emotions of everyday life The artist captures on these canvases what touches him from ordinary life; an achievement of modern painting and a complete departure from academic painting we can see fifteen portraits of Benczúr—twelve self-portraits and three copies of portraits arranged in an installation—from the earliest graphic in which the painter of the glory of dualist Hungary is already facing life and passing away having lived through the tragedy of the Great War and Trianon In the room dedicated to historical painting visitors can see a miniature reproduction of the painting The Recapture of the Buda Castle in 1686 the monumentality and dynamism of which reflects the nation’s sense of self-consciousness and glory On the other side of the room hang works of other genres of historical painting A late Rococo life painting—an original work returned to Hungary from America through the Hungarian National Bank’s commercial paper programme—depicts Louis XVI and his family at the moment before their capture at Versailles Benczúr’s historical paintings and representative portraits are characterized by astonishing materiality A separate table shows that the painter created a collection of three hundred textiles from 16th and 19th-century dresses and various pieces of fabric Evelin Páll points out: ‘We have also received a series of graphics from descendants showing that Benczúr always drew a nude first and then dressed it methodically are impeccable from an anatomical point of view.’ hand-made copy of the painting from 1897 is on display—was inspired by his children playing happily on holiday This subject matter fits with his definition of painting: ‘it is only worth living for beauty’ and ‘art must please in order to give us beauty’—according to surviving sources Benczúr saw painting as a means of pleasure One corner of the final room is reminiscent of the master’s library and the interior is completed by an original table that Benczúr used in his studio in the ancient park of Epreskert Another theme in the room is the painter’s relationship with realism and naturalism with several naturalistic landscapes and depictions of the harmony between man and nature from the 1870s an impressionistic landscape in the garden of his mansion Gyula Benczúr turned away from what he had been following his entire life and instead painted the garden surrounding his home This is the first time the painting has been on display—until now even the art historical profession was unaware of its existence Click here to read the original article Hungarian Conservative is a quarterly magazine on contemporary political philosophical and cultural issues from a conservative perspective Sie haben erfolgreich Ihre Einwilligung in die Nutzung von Transfermarkt mit Tracking und Cookies widerrufen Sie können sich jetzt zwischen dem Contentpass-Abo und der Nutzung mit personalisierter Werbung WHILE the pictures broadcast from the meeting between the prime ministers of Slovakia and Hungary in Szécsény on September 10 showed an almost idyllic atmosphere those who did not expect Slovak (or Hungarian) politicians to change their attitudes overnight were proved right in the days that followed WHILE the pictures broadcast from the meeting between the prime ministers of Slovakia and Hungary in Szécsény on September 10 showed an almost idyllic atmosphere At their meeting Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and his Hungarian counterpart agreed on a joint 11-point statement in which they promised to cooperate in easing tensions between the two countries to respect the opinion of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe on the question of Slovakia’s controversially amended State Language Act and to organise a joint session of their two cabinets political analyst professor Miroslav Kusý said he does not believe that the meeting in Szécsény significantly contributed to the improvement of Slovak-Hungarian relations but added that he appreciates seeing the leaders finally fulfilling their political duty it’s without any doubt a duty of politicians to meet negotiate and search for solutions,” Kusý told The Slovak Spectator “And the fact that this hadn’t been done [for a long time] only made things worse.” The prime ministers’ press conference had barely finished before Ján Slota the leader of the Slovak National Party (SNS) which is part of Slovakia’s ruling coalition alongside Fico’s Smer party reacted to the meeting by firing accusations and expressions of disgust at the Hungarian side He remained silent during preparations for the meeting following a call by Slovak Foreign Affairs Minister Miroslav Lajčák for Slovak politicians to abstain from strong statements about Hungarians in order to preserve a calm atmosphere Slota said minority rights in Slovakia are above-standard and “if an agreement on reciprocity is not passed and the genocide of Slovaks in Hungary is not explained Slota did not elaborate on what he was referring to by his use of the word ‘genocide’ “Hungarian official political circles only confirmed what they are really after: they don’t care about the language act or about good neighbourly relations and friendly relations within the EU,” Slota said He went on to say that what Hungarians want is to reverse the post-WWI territorial settlement in Europe Kusý considers these to be nonsensical statements typical of Slota that are only aimed at getting more support among his voters saying he plans to ask the General Prosecutor’s Office to order the dissolution of the ethnic-Hungarian parties Most-Híd and the Hungarian Coalition Party (SMK) if their deputies attend a meeting of the Forum of Hungarian Deputies of the Carpathian Basin in Budapest which he believes qualifies as ‘high treason’ The forum has been a sore spot in Slovak-Hungarian relations since 2008 when the Slovak parliament expressed concern over the institutionalisation of the forum as a formal consulting body of the Hungarian parliament Hungary’s other neighbours Romania and Serbia have also expressed objections to the existence of such an institution The outgoing speaker of the Hungarian parliament who resigned from her post on September 14 for personal and political reasons said in her farewell speech to parliament that she regards the establishment of the forum one of her greatest achievements “because it did a lot for our national values as well as for the economic and cultural uplift of the region” Fico also mentioned the forum at the Szécsény meeting saying that it “institutionalises the relationship between the Hungarian Republic and Slovak citizens” He asked Bajnai to help him solve this “neuralgic point” in bilateral relations Fico’s Smer party condemned the SMK’s participation in a session of the forum earlier that week saying that it disgraced the Slovak parliament as the home parliament of the SMK deputies Kusý regards the forum a completely legitimate body it can have a kind of provocative role in some contexts and situations,” Kusý told The Slovak Spectator “It was a bit unfortunate of the speaker of the Hungarian parliament to shelter the forum but all the talk about high treason and humiliation [of the Slovak parliament] lacks sense.” Slota said the deputies who attend should be stripped of their mandates in the Slovak parliament When SMK deputies attended the session their leader Pál Csáky said in Budapest that they were acting as free citizens of Europe and that if they were invited to the Austrian or European parliaments they would accept in the same manner Members of Most-Híd sitting in the Slovak parliament did not attend because of other duties they would try to change the Hungarian parliament resolution which made the forum a permanent institution of the parliament party leader Béla Bugár told SITA It was 40 years ago that the first liver transplant in Hungary was performed at the then 1st Department of Surgery fighting for the life of a 12-year-old girl I was probably forming letters sitting at my school desk not knowing that I would have the honour of opening this jubilee conference as the director of the department where the participants of this historic operation recall their experiences and memories of that time,” Dr Transplantation and Gastroenterology (STÉG) said new hope and history was born in the clinic just as Professor Thomas Starzl had done almost 20 years earlier when he performed the first human liver transplantation on March 1 1963 after performing experimental liver transplantation on nearly 200 dogs Attila Szijártó welcomed several members of the then medical and surgical team present at the conference daughter of the former legendary professor and rector of the university assistants who are still working at the clinic Although experimental liver transplants in dogs have been performed in Hungary since 1972 the first human transplant in Hungary was still a long time in the making This involved not only the development of professional protocols for pre- and post-operative procedures such as the “donor alert” and the duties of the head surgeon in addition to the considerable experience the clinic had already gained in the management of alcoholic liver haemorrhage patients but also occasional study trips abroad by members of the medical team she had the opportunity to gain a deeper insight into the anaesthesiology of liver transplantation in Cambridge under the supervision of Professor Roy Calne the specialist who performed the first successful kidney transplantation in Hungary on November 16 1973 at the 1st Department of Surgery of SOTE in Budapest also highlighted in his lecture how many study trips preceded the successful liver transplantation in 1995 gave a detailed overview of the preparations and the course of the 1983 operation milestone in the history of Hungarian surgery He also presented a television report from that time so that in addition to the medical information the students could also get an idea of how different the operating theatre the intensive care unit and their equipment are today The patient was a 12-year-old girl treated for severe liver failure resulted by a hepatitis infection at the age of 7 Peter Kupcsulik was regularly treating patients with hepatitis at Bethesda Children’s Hospital which is how he came into contact with the girl who needed a transplant About a week after parental consent was obtained it was discovered that there was a 36-year-old brain-dead male donor whose organs were being collected by a team of doctors led by Professor Kupcsulik Andor Szécsény performed the transplantation procedure by removing the girl’s liver Kupcsulik performed the arterial and biliary sutures “In contrast to today’s procedure the patient received 8,400 millilitres of blood during the 7 hours and 15 minutes of the intervention,” Dr adding that the girl received about 11 litres of transfusion later on during the post-operative phase Dr. Péter Kupcsulik said. The day after the operation the patient was breathing spontaneously and did not need ventilator from the second day she was feeding orally On the 4-5th day an expulsion reaction appeared which was successfully treated with Cyclosporin treatment on the 7th day – this was the first use of this new immunosuppressive drug in Hungary Her liver circulation was still good on day 31 which was only temporarily helped by the antibiotics used followed by sepsis and later pulmonary infiltration It was later found out that the girl had a cytomegalovirus infection,” Dr there were no antiviral drugs available at all – the range of anti-rejection drugs was also limited He also quoted Professor Szécsény’s statement from the press conference held on the 14th day after the liver transplant: “the first successful liver transplantation in Hungary can be considered a scientific achievement which proves that many institutions are capable of the highest level of collaboration which in fact is a hallmark of the quality of Hungarian healthcare.” Ferenc Perner gave an overview of the history of organ transplantation in Hungary András Németh who performed the first kidney transplantation After the operation performed in Szeged in 1962 Politics then banned similar operations for about 10 years András Németh from performing 4 more transplants the legal framework for organ transplantation was developed and by the time the kidney transplantation program was organised at SOTE on the suggestion of Professor Andor Szécsény and the first kidney transplant waiting list was established and the first operation was performed after immunodiagnosis this obstacle was removed from the path of medicine This was now an official program funded by the Ministry of Health In connection with the successful kidney transplantation in November 1973 after which the patient lived another 26 years the professor recalled that not only was the imaging equipment that today helps medicine lacking but there were also difficulties in pre-operative coordination: for example a member of the medical team gave the post office box number of a village on Lake Balaton An important milestone was the resumption of kidney transplantation in Szeged in 1979 followed by the launch of the liver transplantation program of SOTE in the 1980s three more operations were performed and then the program stopped kidney transplantation departments were opened in Debrecen and finally in Pécs in 1993 Another milestone was the first heart transplantation in 1992 at the Heart and Vascular Center of Semmelweis University thanks to Dr and in 1995 the first fully successful liver transplantation at the Department of Transplantation of SOTE – also performed by Dr The next major breakthrough was the first successful lung transplantation in 2015 at the Breast Unit of the National Institute of Oncology Deputy Director of the Department of Surgery Transplantation and Gastroenterology at Semmelweis University gave an insight into the future of liver transplantation Presenting the transplantation data of the past decades he drew attention to the importance of joining Eurotransplant an international organ exchange cooperation that has significantly improved the outlook for patients and increased the number of procedures performed a traumatised liver patient was able to find a liver in 12 hours through Eurotransplant,” Dr According to the latest data from the Hungarian National Blood Transfusion Service (HNBTS) a total of 369 organ transplants were performed in Hungary at the seven organ transplant centers in four university cities 313 from deceased donors and 56 from living donors 67 liver transplants were performed last year the number of procedures performed started to rise again which made donor care in intensive care units more widely available again,” Dr there are still far more patients waiting for a new liver than there are suitable donor organs available this is partly due to the general shortage of organs partly to the increasing average age of donors and partly to civilisation diseases that also have a negative impact on organ quality The composition of patients on the waiting list has also changed as the indications for liver transplantation have changed significantly in recent years Although thanks to new effective antiviral treatment the number of liver transplants due to hepatitis C and B virus infections has declined the number of people on the waiting list for alcoholic liver disease in Hungary remains significant and the most common indication is biliary tract disease (mainly primary sclerosing cholangitis) Liver transplantation may also be justified for certain early-stage tumour diseases the procedure can be performed only under very strict rules and only if certain criteria are met liver transplantation for biliary tract cancer is not yet planned partly because of the difficulty of the Mayo protocol and partly because one of the main problems in Hungary is that the disease is detected too late This type of tumour develops more frequently precisely at the site of the aforementioned primary sclerosing cholangitis so liver transplantation is important in this case not only to treat the underlying liver disease but also to prevent the development of the tumour the MELD score-based classification is not used exclusively for the listing as it takes little account of the different aspects of tumour recipients in the prioritisation process in which case patients on the waiting list are also assigned tumour scores this system needs to be continuously updated and improved to take into account changing indications Since there are fewer and fewer standard quality livers available and living donor transplantation is limited and donation after cardiac arrest is practically non-existent in Hungary due to organisational difficulties and lack of social acceptance the use of mechanical perfusion may play an increasingly important role in the future This can sometimes improve the condition of the liver the Transplantation Section of the Hungarian College of Health Professionals and the Hungarian Transplantation Society are continuously lobbying the Ministry of Health and the National Institute of Health Insurance Fund Management (NEAK) to ensure the purchase and continued funding of a similar perfusion machine (for now for kidney and heart)” Katalin Darvas donated the medical records of the first liver transplantation which she had preserved and collected for the conference Attila Szijjártó thanked for the documents adding that they will be used for educational purposes At the weekend participants dressed in Palóc folk costumes on St They live in about half a hundred settlements but they have retained distinctive traditions including a very apparent dialect of Hungarian The origin of the Palóc has already covered many ethnographers and historians there are still many white spots regarding the origin of the ethnic group: the Palóc seem to have some sort of connections with the Khazar The most famous Palóc settlement is village of Hollókő which was proclaimed a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987 and website in this browser for the next time I comment Y"},"category":false,"taxonomy":{"active":false,"name":"category"}},"markup":{"custom_html":true,"wpp-start":"","wpp-end":"<\/ul>","title-start":"","title-end":"<\/h2>","post-html":"{thumb} {title} {stats}<\/span>{excerpt}<\/p><\/li>"},"theme":{"name":""}} You have successfully joined our subscriber list SupportUs Newsletter © 2025 DailyNewsHungary | All rights reserved Úgy tűnik nem található semmi ezen a helyen IMPRESSZUM SZERZŐI JOGOK ADATVÉDELEM FELHASZNÁLÁSI FELTÉTELEK