Hajnal Endre

Endre HAJNAL was born in Hungary and currently lives there. His art reflects the European influence, particularly the School of Impressionism. He studied at the University of Budapest and thereafter he continued his education of French Impressionism in Paris, the classical arts in Italy and the water-colour technique in London. By traveling and visiting the most famous museums and galleries throughout the world, Hajnal also obtained valuable knowledge and inspiration from the great artists of today to the Old Masters of 17th-18th Centuries. He very much likes to travel and paints landscapes, poppyfields, field of wild flowers, seascapes, rocky deserts and commissioned portraits in European countries, United Kingdom, United States, Africa and Asia. Hajnal's paintings are on display in numerious galleries in Hungary and abroud.

Endre HAJNAL is a painter of nature to the manner born, in the way the great predecessors pursued this genre. As though he felt the message of poplars, brilliant surfaces of waters, answering their challenges, developing into paintings the impressions he had gained out of doors. He speaks of the message of reeds, of the sunrays reflected by lake Balaton, of its sailing boats, its waves. He tells us about the dazzling reds of poppies, the violet tints irises too and dahlias in the seven colours of the rainbow. In a special Hungarian way. He is not satisfied with a couple of sunflowers, but creates huge bunches of them in his creations. He does not turn his back to his surroundings, but paints of them with large avenues crowned with a high foliage, and seemingly endless perspectives.

Endre HAJNAL's values can be but enriched by his individual peculiarities and absolutely personal features. Nor does he belive the art critigs in whose opinion painters can no longer find anything to be learned from nature, from plein air art, since in the course of past centuries everything had been revealed by those masters working centuries ago.

His pictures bear witness to the fact that in the present there are still heaps of things offered in cities and in the countryside alike, be these spots in their own country or beyond its flontiers he does not leave the experiences collected at home: in Hungary nor is this the habit of intellectuals, who travel a lot. He too takes along his unforgottable usual memories from home. The pictorial problems presented by the mediterranean panorama, the view from Sorrento to Capri, the venetian palaces near the Rialto, the well fostered plants, near the french capital, in Versailles are represented with the same immediacy as his landscapes painted in his own country Hungary.

It would not be hard to name the sources of his art. It goes without saying that they were Renoir and Monet. One should, however, be pointed out that those who set him off his way to art were János Halápy and Mme. Masha Feszty. And how it is with a genuine hungarian impetus. Lajos Dobroszláv, a man born in the same mining town as he had learned their painting techniques but their regional points of view as well. But the admiration of their national traditions too. His vision of the water-lilies of Tatabánya are to be compared with those of the french painters of Argenteuil and the difference at once gets evident. this might be considered a local characteristic but is rather a feature Endre HAJNAL's very own.

POGÁNY Ö. Gábor

art historian

Translated from the hungarian by Lili HALÁPY

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