I tear my heart-hiding heart into a hundred petals - Anna Lesznai exhibition at Sándor Ziffer Gallery
Anna Lesznai is one of the significant female representatives of the Hungarian avant-garde that developed at the beginning of the 20th century. In addition to his published and unpublished intellectual heritage as a poet, writer, and storyteller (a large part of which is kept by the Petőfi Literary Museum), he left behind a huge oeuvre of fine and applied arts. More and more people know this hidden world. The Hatvany Lajos Museum in Hatvan preserves most of his known works - with the exception of a few, but significant pieces: nearly 2,400 drawings (sketches), watercolours, gouache and tempera paintings. This very mixed fine art legacy was a gift from Tibor Gergely, Anna Lesznai's third husband, in 1974.
Our exhibition selects from this collection, but we present the main events of his life, his poetic and literary work and the vibrant intellectual community that defined Hungarian artistic and intellectual life at the beginning of the 20th century. The inspiration for Anna Lesznai's art is the garden surrounding the small baroque castle in Alsókörtvélys, the vitality full of nature's miracles, and - like her colleagues who worked in the early Art Nouveau style - she was nourished by the Eastern culture living close to nature and the most ancient source, folk art. Both from the set of forms and symbols of folk object culture, as well as from the pure source of folk songs, ballads and folk tales (Kodály, Bartók).
