I always acknowledged my Jewish identity even in the times when it wasn’t a comfortable thing to do. For me being Jewish is my existence, but I’m not a self-asserting Jew, and I also lack the Hebrew and the Talmud Torah knowledge which would strengthen my Jewish identity. My declared Jewish identity has evolved into pictures, and I’m able to create an image that is worth as much as expression through literature. I no longer carve stones and cast bronze because I don’t have any assistants but I still draw and right now I’m doing graphics. Lately my drawings have been received so well that it’s given me a drive to keep on painting.
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Displaying 19351 - 19380 of 50826 results
Egon Lovith
In my opinion I have a very good relationship with the Jewish community. It’s a very promising thing that the current president, Gabor Goldner, has plans for me. He wants me to donate my works with Jewish subjects – among them my Bible sequence, so all together about 50-60 large paintings – and they will display them in the new building of the university’s Department of Judaism. The name of the exhibit would be either Lovith Collection or Lovith Gallery.
In 2002 Gabriela Rostas, an editor of Antena 1 television network, wrote a book on me, which was structured in a question-answer format. It also had a little literary value and it more or less summed up my life. The title of the book is Lumea intr-un cartof, The World in a Potato, with Romanian and English text.
In the same year, two or three months after the book was published, I received an award. One of the leaders of the Jewish community visited me with a delegation from Bucharest – I think his name is Dorin Dorel and he is a well-known Romanian writer but he also published in Jewish papers – and he brought me the award. Marton Izsak and I received the award at the same time. They invited both of us to Bucharest but neither of us went. He was 90 years old and I was 80. So, they had to come to us. The ceremony was at 8pm in Marosvasarhely and two hours later they came here to Kolozsvar. This was the first time I participated in an event like this; they say a few words about what an excellent artist the person is. The award is engraved with the words ‘for his life achievement’. ‘This is the personal award of the Union of Romanian Jewish Communities. It is an award of excellence and speciality for the sculptor Egon Lovith for all his contributions, Dr. Nicolae Cajan and Aurel Iulian attorney.
In the same year, two or three months after the book was published, I received an award. One of the leaders of the Jewish community visited me with a delegation from Bucharest – I think his name is Dorin Dorel and he is a well-known Romanian writer but he also published in Jewish papers – and he brought me the award. Marton Izsak and I received the award at the same time. They invited both of us to Bucharest but neither of us went. He was 90 years old and I was 80. So, they had to come to us. The ceremony was at 8pm in Marosvasarhely and two hours later they came here to Kolozsvar. This was the first time I participated in an event like this; they say a few words about what an excellent artist the person is. The award is engraved with the words ‘for his life achievement’. ‘This is the personal award of the Union of Romanian Jewish Communities. It is an award of excellence and speciality for the sculptor Egon Lovith for all his contributions, Dr. Nicolae Cajan and Aurel Iulian attorney.
After Margo’s death I had a single exhibition in the town museum in Banffy Palace in Kolozsvar. Most of my sculptures were exhibited, all of the newer ones and one or two of the older ones that we brought up from the cellar. The sculptures were displayed in three or four rooms. The two directors personally took care of the arrangement and organization of the exhibit and it turned out to be an excellent one. I also attracted a lot of new fans: museum employees and graduating seniors from university. The exhibit was on for a month during which time seven different television stations promoted it. There were also a lot of newspaper articles about it, almost every newspaper ran a story on it. A local Romanian journalist in Adevarul de Cluj [Truth of Kolozsvar] newspaper wrote, ‘Lovith mai mult ca everu’ [Lovith is more than Jewish]. The Romanian papers expressed positive surprise and enthusiasm about my works. The Hungarian papers analyzed the exhibition on a deeper level, exploring my art thoroughly.
Margo died in 1999. I was left alone after 54 years of marriage. I completely stopped sculpting, working became difficult for me and I even gave some of my tools away. So, it’s only drawing and painting that’s left for me to do. Many people look up to me and respect me for having done so many things. Somebody told me once, ‘How can a sculptor also paint, be a graphic designer, cast ceramics, and also work with metal?’ The only comment I had on his question was, ‘What can I do, I’m a belated Renaissance man?!
After having my paintings exhibited in Hungary, the Germans also became interested and wanted to exhibit my work. It was an ordinary business deal and the German weren’t particularly welcoming towards me. They needed my paintings because there was no other Holocaust painter who had a similar subject matter. [Egon refers to the fact that in his own paintings, in contrast to most other paintings that deal with the disturbing search for the ‘whys’ of the Holocaust, Egon’s paintings represent his personal memories expressed by a suggestive conciseness and quiet refrain.] My Holocaust collection was exhibited in the Museum of Dachau in 1997, and it is very important to me because my paintings were displayed at the very same place where all my sufferings had taken place. I depicted my own personal stories, the stories of the concentration camps: that somebody doesn’t even have the strength to eat, that somebody is cowering with an empty plate, there are three dark shadows throwing a baby into a deep trench; these images are in my Holocaust series.
Later I negotiated with a museum in a small Hungarian town, but I cannot recall its name. They told me they wanted to transform an old, run-down synagogue into a monument for the deported and they were interested in my paintings, and I had to give them a price. We negotiated for a long time in the 1990s and finally they bought and took my Holocaust collection to Hungary with great enthusiasm. From the ministry in Budapest I got the confirmation that the museum had received my collection.
I didn’t stay in Israel in the 1990s because I had already started my art career in Kolozsvar and I had my atelier here. I also can’t stand the climate and the chaotic situation of Israel, I couldn’t adapt to it. I belong here, people know who I am and my works and my fame are working for me now. All my statues are here, here are many Hungarian and Romanian Jews who bought my works, so I’m doing fine here.
What was wonderful about the whole story was that we met the husband of one of Margo’s relatives, who owned a laundry business at the airport – a lovely man, who emigrated during the Ceausescu era – and he made us stay in Israel for eight or nine months in a furnished four-room apartment decorated with paintings. That’s when I met Ervin Salamon, an excellent painter. I also visited Adolf Adler, who was a very good painter as well. We lived very comfortably in our four-bedroom apartment in Israel, we had a television, an air-conditioner. The husband of Margo’s relative even gave us money, about 400 shekels, and said, ‘I won’t let you take these paintings back! You are going to start working; buy some paint, I opened an account for you.’ He always quarreled with me for not buying more things. Margo and I really lived at ease. We were there for about eight months and they took us to various cities. I had one of the rooms for myself, where I painted, displayed my works and invited other artists. I constantly had visitors. One of the very important Jewish newspapers in Tel Aviv, which was published in Hungarian, did a story on me.
I painted a Holocaust sequence and did most of the paintings for it in 1987. The sequence was a reflection of my inner motive. The subject had developed in my perception and I felt I could express it in a personal way. In 1996, when the Holocaust sequence was completed, I was debating what to do with it. With all the necessary recommendations, much money, clearing through customs, in the form of museum patrimonial I took 33 Holocaust works to Israel because the previous year, the director of Yad Vashem Museum was in Kolozsvar and I had met him. He probably came to visit the Jewish community and he knew Oliver Lusztig – who was an army general who had come back from Dachau and was a member of the DJYO. Lusztig brought the director of Yad Vashem to my atelier and made some arrangements in this matter. When the director came and saw my paintings he told me that the paintings had to be taken to Israel. I got all the official permits and I took the paintings to Israel but by the time I arrived in the Yad Vashem [28], the director, I don’t remember his name, had been laid off. He told me there was nothing he could do and then I told him that I was stuck there with my wife and so he said to me, ‘Call me in two days’. For the time being we stayed at my aunt Edit’s. The new director wasn’t interested in talking to me and just didn’t care. Two days later I talked to the former director who said to me, ‘There have been some changes and the museum cannot display your entire collection but the committee agreed to receive five of your paintings.’ I didn’t leave any paintings there; I had no intention of negotiating with them.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
When they started to be more organized at the Jewish community I was called in to it a number of times. I turned to Jewish subjects in my paintings, which had been impossible to do before because I could have never exhibited them. At the state art exhibitions they didn’t accept any Jewish or biblical subject matter so after 1989 it was a great relief to be able to paint what I thought. It was then that I decided to have only individual exhibitions. Initially in my work I focused on Jewish typology: portraits, praying Jewish figures, and then mainly biblical subjects. I started reading the Bible again and it became a Jewish history book for me, which is depicted in a particular way in my paintings.
My first visit to Israel was under Ceausescu in 1989. I went by myself, they let me out without my wife but I didn’t have too much money. [Editor’s note: It was a standard procedure in the Ceausescu era that family members were not allowed to leave the county together because of fear that they would not return.] After 1989 [following the Romanian Revolution of 1989] [27], Margo and I could leave together, traveling together was no longer a problem. After 1990, the standard of living didn’t get much better here, but at least we no longer depended on food stamps. Margo and I tried to get things done which we couldn’t afford to do previously. We renovated and fixed our bathroom because everything in it was leaking.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
I had exhibitions under Ceausescu [26] but I only had Mexican themes. I created a mode of expression that they couldn’t lay blame on. I usually made cast bronze sculptures but I also had some burnt terracotta. Terra cotta, burnt soil, means ceramic sculpture. In 1953, because of my tuberculosis, I had to stop sculpting and stone carving for a while and I decided to experiment with ceramics. I hadn’t had a significant experience with ceramics but specialists set up a kiln in my atelier where I could experiment with the hot glazes. I tried to make the chromatics, the coloring to be diverse and to give each of the pieces its own rhythm. During the Ceausescu period, they became very popular and desired items mainly because they were very cheap. My ceramics became known and kids came from schools to buy them for Women’s Day or for teachers. I had orders for 20-50 pieces at times. I also made compositions of ceramics that could be hung on the walls. My ceramic sculptures are all glazed, I made functional and partly functional ceramic things, for example, pitchers and ashtrays. I also made ‘useless’ ceramics: whistling jugs and ornaments. In a way, ceramics helped me financially all the time. I was inspired by Mexican art; the Mexicans had wonderful ceramics. People liked my works, they were selling like hot cakes.
Before 1989 Margo and I felt that the situation was unbearable. For the entire time, even though I was a member of the Party, I kept my Jewish identity as well. [Although Egon is not religious, he considers his Jewish identity important as a way to relate to the world.] After fascism and socialism, communism seemed the right choice for me but it slowly became a burden because I’m in the category of people that benefited little by communism. Even though communism provided me work and the opportunity to advocate communist doctrines, to be honest, it affected me very negatively overall. They promoted that the goal of the communist system was to achieve a higher state of humanity, where people wouldn’t be exploited and where people would be paid fairly for their contribution to the state. However, in the case of the Loviths, the fact that we had come from the concentration camp and had absolutely nothing didn’t bother the communists. Moreover, we were put in a discriminatory category, which hardly provided any living arrangements for us. Not having children we were always on the bottom of the list to get anything, even though it was the concentration camp that made us unable to have children in the first place. This was a big grievance for us and we felt that there was no reparation even when, years later, we were given a few dollars of indemnity.
During the 1980s, I didn’t have any positions other than teaching, which I had come to really enjoy. At the end of the 1980s, the Institute of Fine Arts was laying its employees off. There was a meeting at which it didn’t seem that they would fire anybody. They suggested that I take over the sculpture department. I’m usually a patient person but I really lost my temper because I had previously heard that the position they suggested me to take wasn’t going to be paid for but was going to have voluntary status. It didn’t affect my salary for teaching but I would have needed to manage the sculpture department for free. The same work that somebody had previously been paid for doing, I was going to have to do for nothing. In the end I took the position even though I didn’t benefit from it at all. I retired from the institute in 1991. I wasn’t even 70 years old and because of this my pension is very low.
During the 1980s, it was horrible to deal with food stamps, standing in line and having financial difficulties. The sugar cubes that we eat so indifferently today were a treasure at the time. I love to spread a lot of butter on my bread but the tiny piece of butter we could obtain once a month didn’t allow me to do that back then. For meat we had to stand in lines for hours. Margo and I already felt that Romanian socialism had failed and things were only getting worse.
The place where I live now used to be a Securitate house. Before that, the house had belonged to two Jewish sisters – at some point, probably a larger family had lived here. Whoever had moved in here last built the upstairs addition to the house.
The husband of our Jewish friend, Sara Szekely, – who had good relations – arranged that we received a one-bedroom block apartment in the 1970s. There was no kitchen, the room only had a kitchenette by the sink, where we could cook. We had a bathroom but it only had a shower and a toilet. We lived there for a long time because it was suitable for us. But then somebody claimed the apartment. [Somebody needed the apartment and Egon and Margo had to move out.]
Once again, somebody said something on our behalf and we were given a different apartment in Einstein Street, where some Jews had lived but moved out. It was towards the train station behind Hora Street. It was a two-bedroom apartment with an attic, a cellar, and a laundry room but since it was next to big buildings our short house was completely dark. There was a tiny run-down apartment in front where an awful gypsy family was living with a bunch of kids – at least five –and there was a dying Jewish person living separately in another room. We lived there for a long time. For me it was quintessential to have quietness and peace to be able to work, but there was none of it in that place so we decided to leave.
Once again, somebody said something on our behalf and we were given a different apartment in Einstein Street, where some Jews had lived but moved out. It was towards the train station behind Hora Street. It was a two-bedroom apartment with an attic, a cellar, and a laundry room but since it was next to big buildings our short house was completely dark. There was a tiny run-down apartment in front where an awful gypsy family was living with a bunch of kids – at least five –and there was a dying Jewish person living separately in another room. We lived there for a long time. For me it was quintessential to have quietness and peace to be able to work, but there was none of it in that place so we decided to leave.
We were begging to get a two-bedroom apartment in the first buildings that were built on Union Street. They didn’t give it to us, only to others, who had children. We found out soon, that without children we would hardly get an apartment. Block apartments were considered luxurious. I wanted to sign up for one and I was standing in line to see an acquaintance of mine – a party secretary, a Hungarian man whom I knew from the UTC – who saw me after eleven hours of waiting in the cold hallway and said to me in confidence, ‘My friend, come, tell me what I can help you with’. I told him that not only had our old home been demolished, but we also were unable to get a new one. Then he said to me, ‘My friend, there’s really nothing I can do about that’, and left without saying goodbye.
We couldn’t cook in this apartment so we always ate out for lunch. For a long time we ate at the Jewish kosher canteen on Union Street. During the 1960s we ate at the canteen of the Victoria Factory, where Margo worked as a seamstress. This was a co-operative factory where a lot of our Jewish acquaintances worked.
The workers received housing from their factory. I have horrible memories of this period because we weren’t able to get a decent apartment. Our first home on Majalis Street was torn down in the 1950s and they built the new student palace [the House of University Students], on Beke [in Romanian Pacii] Square. Everybody who lived in the house that was to be demolished got some kind of housing, everybody except us. They all got it because they had children. After a lot of effort we finally got a worthless apartment in Andrei Muresanu district. It was further out from the last bus stop and we wouldn’t even have had a kitchen. In 1956 I was suffering from tuberculosis and it took me a long time to recover. I really didn’t want to move into that apartment and eventually we got a different one-bedroom apartment on Mocok Avenue [in Romanian Motilor Avenue, close to the city center]. We could enter from a common yard. There was only gas installed in the house so there was no water in our apartment. We bought a bucket and we used it to bring water in from outside and that’s how we took care of washing. There was no bathroom, we bathed in a washtub. The horrible thing was that we didn’t have a toilet. We had to go through the yard to knock on the neighbor’s door, they opened their door for us and we used their toilet. The walls of the bathroom were made of plywood and so the smallest noise could be heard. Once we were done we had to thank them and then we left and the neighbor locked the door behind us. Margo and I were so uncomfortable with this that we would rather run to the main square where we used the public toilet. It was awful and we were embarrassed to use a bowl for peeing because we didn’t even have anywhere to empty it. We lived in this place for four or five years. There was a communal toilet near my atelier and it saved us many times.
After World War II, Samu, Edit’s husband, opened a glass and porcelain business in Kolozsvar with his father. Samu had this business, which supported his family. Edit stayed with their two children and looked after the apartment. That’s where Samu died in the 1960s, in the time of Gheorghiu Dej, and afterwards Edit and the two girls emigrated to Israel. The two girls were probably 17-18 years old, were already married to two Jewish boys from Moldova and they emigrated together. They settled in Tel Aviv. Edit settled in Holon and I don’t remember what or where she worked. She didn’t know anybody when she arrived but as an immigrant she received a furnished one-bedroom apartment. Later she married a Hungarian Jewish man who had been living there for quite some time and owned a house. He sold lemonade. Later, when we were in Israel, we spent very little time with him but he was very friendly. During his last years, Edit helped out with the purchasing and selling of ice cream and fruits. Lia learned to play the piano, became a musician and now teaches music at home in Tel Aviv. Judit studied something more modern, some computer thing.
,
After WW2
See text in interview
I found out that it was a Hungarian gypsy named Jeri who had stolen our furniture from our old apartment. I went with the guys from the DJYO and we were so frightening that we beat it out of him that after the deportation – before the house was bombed – he went in and took the furniture. He returned the furniture and we even got a written record of it. I took a big wardrobe and a table with a mirror home. Unfortunately, the flat was so narrow we could hardly fit them in. There was already the big sofa that we had got previously and a rickety table with one chair in the kitchen. There couldn’t have been two chairs because there wasn’t enough space. I started to paint there and that’s where I did my first self-portrait. Samu left me a lot of dried paint and brushes when they moved out.
For a short time we lived in the Peter-Pal villa and when Edit and Samu moved out from the apartment on Majalis street, Margo and I moved in there. It was a miserable one-bedroom apartment. Right next to us there was a three-bedroom apartment and our place probably used to be part of it and they must have built a kitchen into it so they could rent it out. The landlord was a rich man; he owned a metal works and he also owned some property. Our room was unbearably cold until we leased an iron stove from Margo’s salary [who worked as a seamstress at the Victoria Factory.] We also had a terribly dark and damp cellar where we kept our logs and coal. I used to bring the logs up from there with candlelight all the time. It was very cozy and warm after that, and we really enjoyed ourselves in that narrow apartment. There was a big window that looked onto the street. There was no such thing as a pantry or a fridge. We didn’t have a bathroom only a tap of cold water in the kitchen and that’s where we had to bathe. We had a wooden trough that we bathed in. We poured water on each other with cups. We didn’t have a toilet either. There was a toilet in the yard but the water always froze in it during the winter. Nevertheless, we lived happily and finally we had our own room, which was an extraordinary thing for us. We had to pay the same rent as Edit and Samu had paid before us.
From one day to the next I found out that I would no longer receive my 2,000 lei salary for being the president of the Fondul Plastic. I remained president but I didn’t get paid anymore. The secretary of the Fondul Plastic had a 1,800 lei salary. His salary, along with the agents’, and the transport workers’ were not terminated, only the president was cut off. I didn’t get any money for my work and there were no services rendered when I did extra work preparing the exhibitions. That was such impudence, but I continued my work patiently. I couldn’t have quit because up until then everybody had told me how wonderful an artist I was so I stayed. But it didn’t matter because I remained on track as an artist. They introduced a discriminatory system where they decided on people’s salaries based on their profile. People with the professions of mathematics and chemistry became category A, the most important category. All the art institutes were either B or C; I don’t even know which one exactly; whatever the salary was lower.
Within the Union there was an organization named Fondul Plastic [Foundation of Fine Arts] that focused on the finances of the Union and also organized exhibitions. I became the president of the Fondul Plastic in the 1970s. Besides teaching at the institute I was also the president. There were always more Hungarians among those who organized the exhibitions, placed the works. There were differences in where we put certain artists’ works at the art shows, for instance Antal Fulop’s works were always put behind the door and the main space was reserved for Ciupe’s works.
When the Ion Andreescu Institute of Arts was formed, the Uniunea Artistilor Plastici [Union of Fine Arts] was already operating and I had been a member since my student years. The Uniunea Artistilor Plastici in Kolozsvar was modeled after the Union in Bucharest. Ciupe and his friends established it. [Aurel Ciupe was the director of the Institute of Fine Arts in Kolozsvar.] There’s still an office above the university bookstore, where we used to meet. At the time they knew I was looking for an atelier that I could use after I was done with my studies. My professor, Irinescu, got an atelier, which I have today, but he went back, I think to Bucharest, and in 1953 he offered the atelier to me. The atelier is in the downtown area. There was only a water pipe and a light bulb in the room. Once I got the atelier I installed the gas and with a lot of money I made it into a real atelier.
During the time of Gheorghiu Dej [25], in the 1950s, I made a two and a half meter sculpture in the memory of the deported people: three figures – extremely bony people. I portrayed their moment of liberation but it wasn’t received too well in the Ministry. The Museum of Bucharest bought it but a few years later they contacted me to let me know that the sculpture was in very bad shape. I told them I would go up to Bucharest and repair it but they never got back to me and my sculpture disappeared.
In 1957 I made a lot of sculptures with peasant themes, for instance the 907. That’s what it was called, 907. [Editor’s note: The name is referring to 1907, commemorating a Romanian peasant rebellion of that year.] In Mexico I grew up among Indians and I saw what working in the fields was like. The problem was that I made peasants who looked thin just like the field workers in Mexico. One of my sculptor colleges from the sculpture department, without telling me, wrote a very negative article in Fratia [Brotherhood], a local Romanian newspaper: ‘Lovith makes fun of Romanian peasants. Lovith’s peasant figure rather resembles a mosquito.’ He wrote that because the peasants were thin and they were under hardship. I created four bony peasants under a tree, with crows up on the tree, waiting for these peasants to die because their death was inevitable. They were made out of plaster and I was supposed to cast them. In my anger I only left one piece and broke into pieces all the others. Many people told me I was crazy when I said, ‘I’m sick of this, I will not use a subject like this ever again’. My remedy came when in 2002 the Kolozsvar Art Museum asked me to give them my one remaining peasant sculpture, which I hadn’t broken. I took the sculpture to the museum myself by car.
The Hungarian events of 1956 played an important role in the life of the institute. Many students were affected by the events. Students who were on holiday in Hungary at the time brought back the sense of freedom. The Hungarian students in Kolozsvar reacted to it. Students of Babes-Bolyai University organized actions, even called a secret meeting. The students didn’t like the political directions of the education and they wanted to get rid of Marxism or any ideological teaching. They wanted to keep only the core classes: natural sciences and art-related subjects and to have these two to be the main lines. I was the secretary of the primary party unit but at the time I was seriously ill with tuberculosis and lay in bed at home. I remember the party secretary instructed me to get up at any cost, because there was a secret meeting. By the time I got there, the meeting was already over; the Securitate surrounded the place with black cars and caught all the leaders. Among them were Vid Tarnavan, a Hungarian guy, and Imre Balazs, who is still a well-known painter in Hungary. They were convicted for organizing illegal collective actions and sentenced to prison for a year and a half or for two years. I tried to get them out of the hands of the Securitate. I said I would guarantee that these people were only trying to help the education of the institute due to the Hungarian events. They told me not to get involved because it was none of my business. The teaching staff of the institute didn’t take up a position.