Gejza Angyal belongs to artists who spent their lives outside of busy cities and their work is a part of the late cosmopolitan romanticism and the Art Nouveau movement. He was born on 24 December 1888 in Kremnica where he spent most of life and where he also died on 23 September 1956.
The presented graphics called Square in Kremnica illustrates Angyal’s graphical skills. It features the Town Castle – the Church of St. Catharine and people exiting the church so the can participate in a procession (it’s probably Easter Sunday). It shows the life of the historical mining town (although the artist’s inspiration probably came from an earlier era based on the people’s clothes) while capturing both the honourability of the town people and church dignitaries and the misery of the bystanders and beggars. Gejza Angyal suggests that everybody wants to be at the square so they can receive God’s mercy in one way or another on the bright Sunday morning.
The artist studied at The Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest between 1906-1911 (under prof. Edvih-Illés, Olgyay). In 1913 he studied at the private art academy of Simon Hollósy in Munich. At first he became known as a skilful graphic artist thanks to his series that captured the life of miners (1920) and tanners (1911) in Kremnica. There is a visible influence of “Hungarian” schools and artists in the author’s painting language.
Gejza Angyal used luministic lightning style in his paintings which is typical for the Nagybánya artists’ colony and high profile artists such as Miháli Munkácsy, István Réti and others. There are also traces of the late 19th century French art in his work.
He knew his way around recording postures – he was interested in social themes like the lives of miners and small town people. He also recorded them in landscape paintings and vistas of Kremnica. In 1926 he became an honorary member of Société nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He spent most of his life working as a freelance artist (except when he worked as a teacher at the National Technical School in Banská Bystrica in 1914). He was a member of various institutions, such as the Hungarian Society for Science, Literature and Art, United Fine Artists of Slovakia, Kunstverein Bratislava, The Kazinczy Society of Košice.
He had solo exhibitions in Banská Bystrica, Bratislava, Ostrava and post-mortem group exhibition in Bojnice. The house where he lived can still be found in Kremnica and there is also a street named after him.
Ľudmila Kasaj Poláčková
Inventory No.: G-434
Artist: Gejza Angyal
Title: Square in Kremnica
Year of origin: 1920(?) – 1950
Technique: etching
Material: hard cardboard
Dimensions: 56 × 66 cm, 70 × 86 cm
Signature: bottom right, text in pencil: G.Angyal