Peremről mederbe
From Outside to Mainstream

Summary/Abstract: In Phaidon’s newest release, Art Cities of the Future (2013), Kolozsvár/Cluj-Napoca is listed third, and partners up with Istanbul as the only two European future art capitals of the world. For some, this may sound as surprising, for others, it is a heart-warming pleasure and an honour. Be that as it may, the question that pops into most minds is: how did it come to that? How could a shy Transylvanian city trade its comfortable anonymity for worldwide fame? The answer is as obvious among international art connoisseurs, as it seems to be ignored locally, and lies within the Academy of Visual Arts from Kolozsvár/Cluj-Napoca, or, more precisely, in the visual artists it produces. For the last twelve years, the author had the splendid opportunity of becoming close friends with a few painters, graphic artists and curators, present teachers and former students of the academy, of listening to their stories, watching them transpose their daily delights, joyous hopes and sometimes dire fears onto the canvases. This short story conjures up a fraction from the lives of four painters, Zsolt Berszán, István Betuker, István Kudor Duka and Szabolcs Veres, founders of the visual arts group known as Bázis, whose members went on to worldwide fame.

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