Festő és restaurátor

Kákay Szabó György élete hatvan év távlatából

Absztrakt

Painter and Conservator
The life of György Kákay Szabó from a 60-year retrospect

György Kákay Szabó (1903–1964) had an outstanding oeuvre not only in the field of painting but also in restoration and conservation. This study – particularly relevant in light of the recent 120th anniversary of the artist’s birth and the 60th anniversary of his death – aims to present both main aspects of this oeuvre. Letters preserved by the artist’s family, library and archival sources, as well as contemporary press mentions outline the stages of his career: the years spent studying in Milan, Berlin, and Vienna and following the decades when he worked as a restorer and conservator at the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest.
Kákay Szabó completed his advanced education in painting as the student of Oszkár Glatz in Budapest. In 1926, he was awarded the Csernoch Prize, a prestigious award for ecclesiastical art. He used the money to go to a study trip to Paris, where he painted a copy of the Madonna and Child with a Goldfinch by Pseudo-Pier Francesco Fiorentino in the Louvre. This was his first significant copy of an artwork, which subsequently attracted the attention of art historian Tibor Gerevich. Endorsed by Gerevich, he received a scholarship in
1929, which enabled him to enroll at the Collegium Hungaricum in Rome to study painting with other young artists, Vilmos Aba-Novák, István Szőnyi, and Pál Molnár C. The paintings he created there are among the emblematic works of the first generation of the so-alled
‘School of Rome’ art circle. The young artist also appeared at the Venice Biennale in 1930. He painted until the end of his life; several of his works are preserved in public collections but most of the quality artpieces are unpublished.
In the spring of 1930, Gerevich, a cultural politician with good Italian connections and Elek Petrovics, general director of the Museum of Fine Arts, already planned a different career for the young painter. Based on his qualities, Kákay Szabó was sent to restoration workshops in the most prestigious museums in Europe, so that he could use his acquired knowledge as a restorer and conservator later at the Museum of Fine Arts. Kákay Szabó studied from December 1930 to the summer of 1931 with Mauro Pellicioli, chief restorer
of the Brera Gallery in Milan, from November 1931 to March 1932 with Helmut Ruhemann in the restoration workshop of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin, and in 1933 with Sebastian Isepp at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. As a keen observer, in his reports to Elek Petrovich – now preserved in the Central European Art History Research Institute, Archives and Documentation Centre (KEMKI) – and in his letters to his parents, Kákay Szabó accurately documented the contemporary practices of these restoration workshops, the beginnings of X-ray examinations in museums, the examination of forgeries, and other interesting endeavours. These letters are valuable documents of the history of Hungarian and European restoration and conservation in the 1930s.
From 1932 until his death, Kákay Szabó worked at the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, first employes for a trial period, then as a permanent museum officer, and finally as Head of the Restoration Department. Based on his annual reports, the most significant pieces of the museum were entrusted to him, the restoration of which involved great technical difficulties: Saint James by G. B. Tiepolo, the wings of the Sabinov (Kisszeben) altar, The Visitation by Master M.S., and the Picnic in May by Pál Szinyei Merse. After World War II, he also participated in the restoration of paintings returned from Germany.
From the beginning of 1952, Kákay Szabó used the museum’s X-ray machine to examine numerous paintings, discovering unknown details of The Knifegrinder and The Water Bearer by Goya, Portrait of a Young Man by Giorgione, and the Descent from the Cross by Lucas Cranach. His major restoration projects were also reported on by the press. György Kákay Szabó’s approach to conservation was determined by the desire to keep repainting and complementing missing details to the necessary minimum. He cleaned paintings just to the necessary extent and preserved those previous additions he felt were essential to the unity of the piece. He avoided ‘overly restoring‘ artpieces. In the words of Miklós Móré, a contemporary conservator, ’he solved the aesthetic problems of the artworks with a refined sensibility’.