COURAGE

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Triptych by Horia Bernea in Sorin Costina’s art collection is in fact made up of three thematically distinct paintings brought together within the same frame. The artist was one of the most illustrious Romanian painters of the second half of the twentieth century, the promoter of the so-called Neo-Orthodox tendency in Romanian Art. From left to right, the three works that make up Triptych are entitled: Self-portrait, Processional Banner, and Food with Candles. All three are in oil on canvas and are of identical dimensions: 35 cm x 35 cm.

Self-portrait is signed in the lower left-hand corner and dated 15 June 1979. The painting was bought by Sorin Costina direct from Horia Bernea’s studio on 10 December 1979 at a price of 3,000 lei. This is the most well-known of Horia Bernea’s series of self-portraits. It is often included in exhibitions of contemporary art. Placed in the middle, Processional Banner is an earlier work, from 1978. Like Self-portrait, it was bought direct from the artist’s studio, for the same price of 3,000 lei. According to Horia Bernea, the painting of a religious object like the processional banner (Romanian prapor) was his silent protest at the demolition of churches by the Ceauşescu regime from 1977 onwards. The painting was bought on 21 December 1978 and has also featured in numerous exhibitions. The third piece in this thematic series, Food with Candles, was painted in July 1979 and was bought together with Self-portrait from Horia Bernea’s studio on 10 December 1979, also for 3,000 lei. Food with Candles was painted on the very day on which one of the most promising contemporary Romanian poets, Daniel Turcea, died at the age of just thirty-three. Together with the other two paintings or separately, it has also been shown in numerous exhibitions. The three paintings have a common triple frame of oak, the dimensions and material of which were indicated to the collector by the painter himself. Triptych is a defining piece for the personality and art of Horia Bernea, who began his career as an avantgardist who rejected traditionalism only to gradually redefine the avantgarde through his rediscovery and re-reading of traditional Orthodox spiritual values.

The collection of the material for the ‘private archive’ and on the political elite started in 1985, then continued with the cooperation of the Historical Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Science (HAS) from 1988 (commissioned and financed by the publishers of the HVG weekly) and was complemented with a large number of documents just before the 1990 parliamentary elections. Its establishment was linked to the parliamentary almanacs in which the 1990 elections were documented. The various types of material (interviews, correspondence, questionnaires) gathered during the research process were published not in a separate volume but in a thematic ‘election supplement’ by the publishers of the HVG weekly. Later, József Marelyin Kiss and József Kovalcsik published the written documents of the parties and MPs (amounting to some 50–60 archive boxes) as research results of the Foundation for Contemporary Research. The publishing process restarted, and still runs, in the form of a book series, with the addition of material concerning MPs in the later volumes. Altogether, the collection references the personal data, jobs, and CVs of 7,838 people with correspondence and questionnaires and it became the basis of the Collection of Political Transition.

At the beginning of the 1970s, Ákos Birkás was experimenting with critical, grotesque, “bad painting,” targeting purposefully banal subjects. The theme of his work in the collection is four postcards available at the time in Hungary from English import.

On the pictures one sees plush animal toys in everyday situations (sawing, mountain climbing, gathering in a garden, picnicking). The painter juxtaposed the cards in two rows, thus creating a “picture in picture” situation, distancing the viewer from the “cuteness” of the animal toys and making it possible to compare visual analysis of the image promoted for children’s use.