Lajos Kassák is an outstanding representative of the international avant-garde and constructivism. Kassák hated the war and the Nazis from the bottom of his heart! He already deeply condemned the First World War, but the Second World War and Nazi barbarism filled him with even more negative, even more depressive feelings. Therefore, he tried to fight against both with his artistic means. For this collage he used one of the speeches of Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels, (who was perhaps the second most hated and fanatical figure of the criminal Nazi regime, after Hitler, which speech of Goebbels was published by the Nazi newspaper "Reich"! One of the indicators of Kassák's artistic sensibility and genius is that he published an article about the above speech in the MA (Today) newspaper, one sentence of which was then highlighted in the newspaper and in the collage, and used it to expose the lying Nazi propaganda, exactly the opposite of what Goebbels wanted to achieve! This sentence reads: "War has become more and more a race against time." (in Hungarian: “A háború egyre inkább az idővel való versenyfutássá vált.”) By highlighting this sentence in the newspaper and thus in the collage, the artist - who was a journalist, editor, writer, poet and brilliant visual artist at the same time - expressed his skepticism towards the Nazi propaganda of success (in which the retreat was "sublimated" into "flexible separation" and the loss of the battle into "regrouping of forces") and exposed its falsity. Because if the war "became more and more a race against time," it means that time is not working for the Nazis and that their days are therefore numbered! This is how the sensitive artist was able to turn his own speech against Goebbels. That is why this collage is not "just" a brilliant constructivist work, but also carries a hopeful political and psychological message for the masses who have been waiting for the fall of the Nazi regime!
Several isms can be associated with Kassák's name (about which he also writes in his book: Az izmusok története, - The history of isms, - published after his death in 1972), but in summary he can be considered the leading figure of the Hungarian avant-garde. Constructivism, whose domestic era begins with the Ma newspaper in Vienna, proclaims the organizing power of human culture against the disarray of nature. According to his worldview, people and the world must be reshaped in the spirit of expediency and social utility in order to achieve social justice. Kassák's constructivist manifestos are: Image Architecture (1922), Vissza a kaptafához (1923), About Constructivism (1922). (The issues of Lajos Kassák's journal edited in Vienna were digitized by the Austrian National Library.)
Activism typically denotes the aspirations of the left wing of the German Expressionists and Kassák. A particularly committed leftism can be seen in action in the movement of Kassák activism, the goal of which is the realization of a person capable of shaping himself and the world. Thus, for example, activist poems are performed in workers' recitation choirs, and the structure of the poems shows that they want to use this specific form of performance to make the poems sound. Another form of activism can be seen on contemporary posters. Kassák's many journals are also an imprint of activism.
Lajos Kassák's writing and visual arts oeuvre is extremely significant! His life work is the greatest achievement of the entire Hungarian avant-garde, which is because he also measured his own activities with very strict standards. In this time, the art in any field has undergone extremely rapid development. He was a true maximalist. He recognized the selfishness of art early on. He believed that art (work of art) is not an expression but a part of social reality. It should not be a mirror, but an independent activity. The age in which he lived coincided with the revolutionary aspirations of the working class. At the same time, Kassák wanted to revolutionize art. He professed a democratic ideal of art and strove to create an international poetic language. This aspiration of his successfully met the revolutionary new stylistic trends that developed in the 1910-s, which he became acquainted with during his travels abroad. The development of the avant-garde, expressionism, futurism, dadaism, surrealism, and constructivism fell on this period. There is no other artist in Hungarian art whose work is as inseparable from these movements as Kassák's.
Kassák, the leader of the Hungarian avant-garde movement, visited the German capital once: in November 1922. However, he established relations with Berlin's avant-garde literary and artistic groups much earlier. He started his periodicals: A Tett in Budapest in 1915, and after it was banned, he established the periodical newspaper: MA, published from 1916. Which periodical had close ties to Berlin's Die Aktion and Der Sturm. From April 1921, as soon as László Moholy-Nagy, living in the German capital, became the MA's representative in Germany, Kassák's connections to Berlin continued to strengthen. Ernő Kállai, who was also in Berlin, regularly wrote reports for MA about new exhibitions in the German capital, and Moholy-Nagy provided Kassák with fine art illustration material. Lajos Kassák's trip to Berlin on November 11, 1922 was prepared by painter László Moholy-Nagy and art writer Ernő Kállai.
Details of the artwork:
Technique: collage on paper
Size without frame: 17 x 22 cm
Size with frame: 22 x 27 cm
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