Added May 8, 2008
Éva Bednay (Eve B’ay) has been among the
most interesting creative personalities of the
late 20th century. She has more or less been
ignored by the public, as well as the art community,
albeit through no fault of her own.
The reasons for this lie in the political-historical
background which has impacted the fate
and professional activities of the artist, as well
as others.
She was born in 1927 in Budapest, becoming
a renowned artist by the sixties. Along with
her husband, Dezső Bednay who was mostly
known for his enamels, she has taken part in
art education for disabled children, many of
whom have surmounted the difficulties posed
by their condition and became professional
artists themselves.
Even so, her artistic career was profoundly
influenced by the restrictions that were
still present back then in Hungary’s cultural
life. It was compulsory for every artist to be
a member of the the Képzőművészeti Alap
(Foundation of Fine Arts). This group has
first judged her works, along with many others,
then bought them cheap and sold them
abroad, providing a basic means for artists
to make a living, but depriving them of the
opportunity to display their works in front
of the Hungarian audience and art community.
A few weeks ago a gallery in New York has
bought 600 such pieces of art left in the storerooms
throughout the USA, among which her
family has found two early pieces by Éva Bednay.
It was due to sheer luck as much as rigorous research that these pieces that have never
before been seen by the Hungarian public, have
finally made it home. Now the Diplomatic
Magazine presents the two pieces, made with
a trickled lacquer technique.
In the early seventies, spurred on by family
concerns and the need to overcome the restrictions
in artistic work, Éva Bednay has emigrated
first to the United States, then settled
in Bonn, in West-Germany. She has had several
exhibitions in New York, Cleveland, Bonn,
Frankfurt, Cologne, Zurich, Basel, Bergheim
and Münster. Her pictures were displayed at
the end of the eighties at the grand exhibition
in the Műcsarnok, held for Hungarian artists
living abroad.
However, the Republic of Hungary’s embassy
in The Hague, a government agency, has
organized a display encompassing her oeuvre
for the first time. The exhibition was held in
the mid-19th century De Paauw (Peacock) Palace,
which also houses the Mayor’s Office of
Wassenaar. The artist could not be present
personally due to health concerns; even so, she
still works at home. This exhibition has served
to reclaim her for Hungary’s professional circles
and amateur audience.
Following the speeches of Jan Hoekema,
Wassenaar’s Mayor and Iván Udvardi, Hungary’s
Ambassador to The Hague, art historian
Prof. Dr. Heijo Klein, a teacher of the University
of Bonn has emphasized the importance
of the novel approach to materials developed
by the artist herself, as well as her usage of
vivid colors that fit her personality. The Professor
has also described her painting techniques,
such as lacquer painting, silk and textile collages
and oil pastels, sometimes combined with
each other. The Hungarian ambassador has
pointed out that the 20th anniversary of Europe’s
reunification is this year and that the
artist has contributed to this culturally, albeit
so far only implicitly.
Éva Bednay’s works are distinctly feminine
works of art, being very delicate and forming
a complete picture out of small, fine details.
She uses materials for her textile pictures that
would otherwise end up on the waste dumps
of the consumer society, even though they
fascinate her with their color, texture or pattern
of weave, thus being valuable even as used
items. She paints using the colors of the material,
thus expanding the set of artistic tools.
Her images include pieces of fabric and strands
that are of historical value themselves, being
interwoven with human fates and history itself.
Her work raises that which would be lost
without her above its original intended uses.
The oeuvre of Éva Bednay is undoubtedly
characterized by continuous experimentation
and an effort to develop new methods and
unique techniques. However, her works hold
much more than mere fascination with novelty;
they express the spirit and the contradictions
of the age which she worked in. She
strives to find the “key to art”, always looking
for what distinguishes a piece of art from a
mere image, the items of lasting value from
commodities.
Her pictures are multi-layered: they are
beautiful and special at the same time, being
pleasant additions to a home, while also being
deep and conveying important human messages.
They show emotions that touch everyone:
meeting and parting, love and anger, respect
and jealousy, beauty and ugliness, as well
as the fear of mortality and the evanescence of
life. However, Éva Bednay has nothing to fear
of the latter: her lasting works will always
carry the knowledge and the spirit which she
strove to express throughout her artistic career.
A selection of Éva Bednay’s works can be
seen on our website:
ebednay.