BORTNYIK UND DIE „MŰHELY“, DAS GEBRAUCHSGRAFISCHE SCHAFFEN VON SÁNDOR BORTNYIK (1893–1976) UND DAS „UNGARISCHE BAUHAUS“. (German)

In the Hungarian and international art history literature, Sándor Bortnyik is primarily known as an avantgarde artist attached to the circle of the MA (Today/Hungarian Art) periodical established by Lajos Kassák. Less well known is his role in the emergence of modernism in Hungary after 1925. From the very start, his painting and printmaking developed in parallel with and in interaction with his graphic design work. Having spent time in the milieu of the Bauhaus in Weimar between 1922 and 1924, upon his return to Hungary he continued to work not only in painting and printmaking, but also in book art and advertising, as well as photography, toy and furniture design, theatre work, and animation. The transcendence of the boundaries between genres, and even between branches of the arts, and the mutual influence between traditional art problems and processes and new media, are among the characteristic and still influential aspects of the modern culture of objects and visuality that were brought about by the twentieth-century avantgarde movements, and which continued in their wake. The work produced by Bortnyik, who believed that art played a role in shaping society, evolved in this spirit. His private graphic design school, the “Workshop” (in Hungarian: Műhely), was the representative in Hungarian visual culture of the Bauhaus concept of practice-based art training and functionalism, which fed off the ideas of Constructivism. The study provides a brief overview of the later development of his career, and his turn away from the genre of graphic design towards the direct communication of social, and later ideological content in painting and in printmaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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