The paintings of Balázs Szabo reflect his escape to freedom.
By: Megan Sullivan
Balázs Szabo found himself lying in the snow after being thrown through the closed window of a train. The train was heading from Hungary toward the Austrian border, but grenades and machine gun fire intercepted it.
It was 1956 and the Hungarian Revolution against Soviet oppressors had been crushed, and the nation punished by deportations, renewed tortures and executions. At a mere age 13, Balázs fled house arrest alone in attempt to escape a post-World War II Hungary under Communist regime.
After the train wreck, Balázs and many other refugees ran for their lives toward the Austrian border. While he was able to reach safety, others were not so lucky, and he saw these horrors firsthand.
As a child, Balázs was taught in school to hate everything that America represented and to consider everything the West cherished as evil. Political brainwashing and indoctrination were simply part of the rehabilitation program to revive the country. His grandparents, with whom Balázs lived from ages 3 to 9, constantly decontaminated him mentally and told him the truth about democracy, freedom and the West.
Now in his early 60s, Mr. Szabo has lived in the United States ever since he and his family reunited in an Austrian refugee camp and boarded a plane toward freedom.
A full-time artist, Mr. Szabo’s desire to freely express himself, something he couldn’t always do in Hungary without consequence, emanates through his works.
A retrospective of his artwork is on view at the Museum of the American Hungarian Foundation in New Brunswick through Oct. 1. The exhibit, Balázs Szabo: Fantastic Realist A Retrospective of Paintings and Works on Paper, features pieces from the 1960s through the present.
"Balázs’ work is so varied, he likes to say he speaks in many languages, and paints in many languages too," says museum curator Patricia Fazekas.
A walk through the exhibit proves his painting style does widely vary, depending on his subject and inspiration, ranging from impressionism to surrealism, realism to pointillism. His works bring to mind styles that artists such as Picasso, Monet, Seurat and Dalí made famous.
"Most artists create a mold and then they beat it to death by repeating the same thing over," Mr. Szabo says. "I change all the time and evolve, I don’t do the same thing over and over. It would be like a musician always using the same lyrics and only changing the music, a trap I don’t want to get into."
This variation comes out of his wanting to create, not manufacture. In addition to painting, Mr. Szabo also does sculpture, printmaking, glass and tile works and murals.
Mr. Szabo didn’t always know he wanted to become an artist, but "I loved painting and loved drawing and I did it for hours and hours while other kids were playing," he recalls.
Mr. Szabo’s grandfather, a skilled painter, allowed him to doodle while he made lampshades with Hungarian motifs out of parchment paper to sell on the black market for money or food. It was during this time that he discovered his grandson’s talent. He encouraged Balázs and allowed him to help make the lampshades.
At age 9, Balázs’ mother reclaimed him and they lived briefly with her aunt, who had taught at the Arts Academy of Budapest. She provided him with inspiration and early art instruction as well. Balázs did not enjoy the city life, however, after spending so much time in the country near Lake Balaton with his grandparents.
His unhappiness with his mother led Balázs to move in with his father, stepmother and brother. His father, Sándor, was a celebrated classical actor in Hungary, and his stepmother, Kati, was also a well-known actress.
"The ‘creative brew’ in which they lived, surrounded by artists, poets, writers, sculptors, musicians and vagabonds, injected new life into me," Mr. Szabo writes in his art book The Eye of Muse, which won the 1987 U.S.A. Print Design Excellence Award. But unlike his brother, Barna, young Balász disliked dancing school, piano and acting in the movies, still preferring his doodling over everything else.
Once settled in the United States, Balázs and Barna were educated at Storm King School in Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y., the Peddie School in Hightstown and Eron Preparatory School in Manhattan, through the sponsorship of the American family of Robert and Ann Scott Morningstar. Mr. Morningstar also arranged for Balázs to study under Hungarian painter and former Renoir student Pal Fried. Mr. Fried had actually painted Balázs’s stepmother’s portrait in Hungary when she was an actress. "I grew up with his work around me," Mr. Szabo says, "I never knew I’d end up meeting him."
Mr. Szabo was awarded a scholarship to Pratt Institute in Manhattan, but turned it down to attend the Fine Arts Academy in Vienna, Austria, and later the applied arts school, the Angevandte Kunst. "I had a hard time getting along with my professors in both these schools, and chose instead to sit all day long in coffeehouses, sketching feverishly," he writes. "I traveled to Istanbul, Budapest and Sweden where I worked to finance my continued schooling."
With the ultimate goal of becoming a full-time artist, Mr. Szabo started off in the right direction when he received a commission to paint a portrait of McDonald’s founder Raymond Kroc at age 23. He worked several years for the Chicago firm of Feldkamp and Malloy as a gofer to commercial illustrators, and later as a designer for the catalog at Sears Roebuck and other small agencies. In 1967, he moved to Los Angeles and became an art director for United Artists Records. After a devastating earthquake in 1971, he moved to Hawaii, where he spent the next 20 years of his life, and eventually committed himself to his own work. Mr. Szabo, who now lives in Raleigh, N.C., has painted numerous murals in public buildings and businesses from coast to coast and has works featured in museums, corporate and private collections.
While he paints in a variety of styles, Mr. Szabo is particularly known for his fantastic realism style, which draws inspiration from artists such as the Flemish master of the 15th century Hieronymous Bosch, and surrealists Dalí and Max Ernst.
Because Mr. Szabo’s artwork is a product of his life, his dramatic escape and defection has had a significant influence on his work. Acquiring knowledge of politics beyond his years, he was hardened and grew up much faster than children born into a democratic lifestyle. "Everything in art is biographical from one perspective or another, even if it’s abstract, you can always find what that person’s background is," he says.
His experiences are reflected in some of his paintings, including "Moment," an image of a fallen refugee shot by the Russians that will never leave Mr. Szabo’s memory.
"Oh Lord, Save Me From Your Followers," a commemorative work on 9/11 and a protest to human behavior, reveals his subconscious thoughts. "In the end, it turned out to be a prophetic painting and a painting about violence in the world," he says. "If humanity continues to deal in violence, our civilization will collapse."
There is very little written about terrorist regimes, he says, and if people don’t write about it and educate others, history usually repeats itself. For example, there have been many books written about the Holocaust and because of this, it will never be repeated, he says. "If a swastika is painted somewhere, then there’s an outcry," he explains. "But if I draw a sickle or a hammer anywhere in the world, no one will know what it is."
The hammer and sickle is a symbol used to represent communism and communist political parties. Communism is still going on today, he says, and people don’t realize the dangers. His recently published book, Knock in the Night (Prodigal Publishing Co., $16.95), is a cautionary historical memoir of growing up under Communist brutality. Mr. Szabo sent his friend, cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs, a copy of the book hoping that he might stir up enough interest to turn it into a film some day.
"The risk I took crossing the border in 1956 was not in vain," Mr. Szabo writes in the afterword. "For 50 years, I have had the privilege to live in freedom and to be protected by democracy in a land that still inspires the world with its ideas of freedom and liberty."
Balázs Szabo: Fantastic Realist A Retrospective of Paintings and
Works on Paper will be on view at the Museum of the American Hungarian Foundation,
300 Somerset St., New Brunswick, through Oct. 1. Hours: Tues.-Sat. 11 a.m.-4 p.m.,
Sun. 1-4 p.m. Suggested donation: $5. Guided tours are available for groups. For
information, call (732) 846-5777. American Hungarian Foundation on the Web: www.ahfoundation.org.
Balázs Szabo on the Web: www.balazsart.com