Lajos Kassák
Paradoxically, this attack on Kassák's intellectual activism led to a flourishing literary lifestyle which included exhibitions, readings, culturally-spirited events and the journal editing enterprises that were soon to be transported back to Hungary where an underground trend of social campaigning was budding.
He wrote novels, painted extensively, supported the budding socio-photographic form of artistry in Hungary and worked with music in a defining way with his partner Jolán Simon heading a speaking choir which performed regularly at Munka Circle gatherings.
Although his parents wanted him to attend higher education, Kassák decided to quit his studies and started work as a locksmith assistant, gaining a letter of indenture as an apprentice.
After partaking actively in the organization of strikes, rallies, protests and even joining the Hungarian Social Democratic Party, Kassák was fired from his job and totally blacklisted.
Upon coming back to Budapest in 1910, Kassák started participating in political-literary causes and also getting his poems and short stories published by newspaper houses, modernist literary press and socialist publications.
György Lukács criticized Kassák for wanting to be the "official court poet of communism" yet simultaneously denying any affiliation to the communists during the onset of the White Terror.
He was heavily influenced by the international constructivist movement and issued several manifestos: Képarchitektúra ("Image Architecture", 1922), Vissza a kaptafához ("Back to the Basics", 1923), and A konstruktivizmusról ("On Constructivism", 1922).
His works include concrete poetry, billboards, design, novels, and paintings, and were influenced by Expressionism, Dadaism, Futurism, Surrealism and Constructivist tendencies.
In November 1915 – 1916, during the First World War, Kassák started his first journal A Tett (The Action) which launched an artistically oriented backlash against the war-mongering political dealings in his time especially in Central and Eastern Europe.
[5] So, for A Tett, he joined hands with artistic activists from countries in the heat of WWI whose aim was to attack the militarism going on in Hungary, France, Germany and the whole Europe at the time.
The anti-war journal strongly accommodated the politically exuberant views of international writers and incorporated them into its journalistic culture not just as mere observers but as active participants to the dismay and anger of local critics.
A Tett also pointed a torch on the mutilation or killing of the human body, especially the maiming of men during the war, and the adverse effects this has on women, both psychologically and sexually.
According to Kassák, the journal was specially founded to avoid the repressive control of the government by focusing on fine arts, music and other forms of artistry rather than just literature.
To embody this objective, the journal constantly underwent a lot of changes during the period of November 1916 to July 1919 within which time 35 issues were published before it was banned by the authorities; for one, it had a varied number of subtitles.
In fact, MA spread its tentacles to publishing important books and postcard series constituting the reproductions of principal Hungarian artists like Nemes-Lampérth József, Lajos Tihanyi and Kassák's own brother-in-law Béla Uitz.
In a sense, the MA circle became a movement in itself on whose platform several artists rose to prominence, one of which is János Mattis-Teutsch whose works have been on display in the Kassák Museum since early 2020.
During his time in Vienna, Kassák embarked on an evolutionary turn of MA, revitalized the journal in terms of design, content, human resources and imbued it with a new, revamped orientation which embraced the internationalist-bent aura that was dominating the era.
The Kultúrstúdió (Cultural Studio) became a spatial space of activism and artistry all at once with several organized events simultaneously performing the functions of entertainment, the projection of experimental artistic works as well a conscious re-orientation of the political attitude of attendants and members which increased in numbers due to the status of Munka as an open group.
[12] Given how the journal (a derivative of the movement) constructed itself around cultural and socially relevant issues affecting Hungary at the time and was deliberately made affordable, it gained immense popularity and increased in leaps and bounds so much that it lasted between the years 1928 to 1939 until it faced opposition and became subject to censorship from the government.
In his early years during the period of exile and isolation, Kassák experimented with his poetic style, writing poems that were free versed and reflective of thematic multiplicity.
During his later years, Kassák wrote and published a spectacular array of poems that poeticized his personal struggles and reflected on his immediate environments, his past life and psychological introspections.
Although most people know Kassák as a literary virtuoso whose involvement in founding several social and critically enthused journals gained the attention of the public, he is also a painter with some interesting artworks to his credit/name.
His interest in photography launched him into creating photomontages in which he collages several pictures drawn from a theme to visually aestheticize the sociocultural causes that were paramountly upheld by workers in the Munka Circle.
He and other contributors painstakingly designed these cover pages in a way that projected the theme of the issue or volume and this is a noteworthy undertaking that enunciates the distinctive quality of intricately aligning words and images in an interdependent fashion.
To publicly communicate his constructivist vision, Kassák published a shorter German version of a longer manifesto in the 1922 Volume 1 edition of the MA journal under the title ‘Bildarchitectur’.
[18] Although integrated into the collective notion of national culture, avantgardism developed as an independent assertion of politically enthused artistic expression in the heat of internationalism which was bolstered by the surge of modernism during the 20th century.
Within the sphere of the highly significant, internationalist-bent artistic setting, Kassák proves to be quite a memorable figure whose vibrant participation in the avant-garde practice has stirred considerable attention in recent times.
[22] What is more, Kassák collaborated with other writers and artists in Europe to create a synergy of avant-garde engagements that revolved several facets of art – poetry, literary criticism, painting, music etc.
Married once at the age of 17 to János Pál Nagy, a carpenter's assistant, for whom she bore three children, Jolan met Kassak after leaving this marriage during an event organised by the Ujpest Worker's Home.
Upon returning to Budapest from Vienna with Kassak, she spearheaded the speaking choir which frequently performed during the meetings of the members of the Munka (Work Cycle) movement.
