Red sludge

Twenty-one years after the change of regime the Ministry of Justice discovered a great number of Communist-themed works of art in their warehouses. The two hundred and thirty objects will be put on auction on the day of Santa Claus. The amount received will be used in support of the victims of the recent red sludge flow. The auction is organized by the Pintér Gallery.




The wonderful cellar system of the Pintér Gallery is a perfect scene for the exhibition of these objects. One has the impression as if they had survived here in the past decades.






Unlike most of the objects, where the starting price is from a thousand forints (=4 euros) to three hundred thousand, for the portrait of Mátyás Rákosi, the leader of Hungarian Stalinism the bid starts at one forint.









In the case of some works it is difficult to imagine that the artist did not intend them as cartoons, like Sándor Szandai this two spans long statuette of György Dózsa, leader of the peasants revolt of 1514


…or Levente Turi his ceramics entitled “Flat in a modern housing estate”.


Some works of art really show a talent, like these typical Socialist towers of Babel, the “Chimney-builders” by Miklós Somos and the “Construction” by Ádám Würtz, or the pictures of Sándor Ék.





The “Russian schoolboys” is no original painting but an offset print. However, it must have its place here as it had in every school at that time.



Dezső Győri: “Hungarian mother”, Aladár Farkas and Károly Vasas: „Lenin”.



The exhibition and auction has its own facebook page with a number of links to related articles, programs and background information. They even organize a Lenin picture beauty contest, so we have also thought about entering the ones collected for the illustration of the Lenin Song. The gallery has published an on-line catalog on the exhibited objects, and some other sites have also published further pictures. To complement the above ones, here is a bunch of them by András D. Hajdú, from the portal origo.