Giotto's good successor - Ádám Gecsei and Krisztián Varjú made a documentary with this mysterious title about the undeservedly forgotten village church artist József Samodai, who died forty years ago this year.
Until his death in 1984, the painter-restorer decorated many churches with his frescoes and frescoes in the county of Győr-Moson-Sopron, yet he is only known to few. The cultural policy before the change of regime liked to label as clerical an undesirable artist, who thus did not receive state commissions, and his name was silenced.
The system once made an exception for József Samodai, who received a "consultative" commission when no other suitable restorer could be found to decorate the pictures in the hall of the Győr town hall.
In 2002, his children published a book in memory of their father entitled The Resurrection of a Lifetime Work, and from 2024, a film will capture his special lifework. But who was this church artist whom the Munkácsy Prize-winning painter Csaba Tóth mentions in the film as a good successor to Giotto?
József Samodai was born in a deeply religious village family on August 7, 1920. His parents were farmers. As a small child, he carved figures with his father's knife, and at a young age he met the painter József Pandur, who restored church paintings, in his native village, who began to teach him. Árpád Illés and Miklós Borsos also visited the master's studio in Győr-Újváros as students. Returning home from the war, Antal Somogyi, the parish priest of Mosonszentmiklós, an art historian with a reputation in Central Europe, recognized Samodai's talent. Thanks to him, the young man came to the painter-sculptor-restorer Antal Borsa. They already worked together on the ceiling fresco restoration of the Győr Cathedral by Maulbertsch.
"József Samodai painted more than thirty churches in an age that did not value 'clerical' art," says director Ádám Gecsei. – He believed in divine providence, that his artistic service could fulfill his life's mission. He didn't give in to any kind of pressure, he worked with a pure heart and a straight spine."
"His work is a special chapter of Hungarian church painting," adds Krisztián Varjú, the other director of the film. - Before the regime change, he was shunned because of his religiosity, but his artistic commitment and faith did not waver. He left works that reflect both the power of the Christian faith and the depths of Hungarian culture.
Nowadays, when the social role of religiosity seems to be decreasing in the lives of younger generations, the presentation of Samodai's work is particularly relevant.
His art conveys timeless values. If the film is able to pass on this spirit and introduce it to people, then I dare to hope that it will make a worthy contribution to the preservation and transmission of a special heritage."
Regarding the parallel that gives the title of the film to the life work of József Samodai, the painter Csaba Tóth mentions that Giotto took the first steps from the Byzantine tradition towards Western painting, and created realistic and almost film-like compositions and scenes by accepting the new ideals of naturalness:
"We also see this in the case of Samodai, and we know that in the case of each church, the faces of the community and the faithful also appear in the pictures. He brought daily reality into the sacred world in the same way as Giotto. The renewal of ecclesiastical art can only be imagined within the framework of tradition, because the gospels convey eternal values. József Samodai sums up what church art was able to express in Hungary in the middle of the 20th century by completing the approach typical of the Roman school. When I got to know his oeuvre, I clearly felt that he is an artist with a pure soul who creates his works with an intention experienced with faith."
"He was a very simple person in the positive sense of the word, who did his work with all his heart and soul - remembers his master Péter Kis, a graphic artist from Győr.
"I haven't met anyone like him since." I try to be like that, except I'm not Uncle Józsi. I owe it to him that I became a visual artist, he encouraged me to graduate, taught me how to draw and what studies to complete. I was attending an industrial school when my vocational teacher, with whom I lived on the same street, recommended his son and me to learn drawing. I was impressed by the calm I could experience in his studio and the fatherly attention with which he set me on this path at the age of fourteen or fifteen. I consider him an example to follow as a teacher, I still work with his method today:
show yourself as a person; if you have a high level of craftsmanship and your students deem you worthy of following, you will be the standard bearer and they will follow you.
After a serious stroke, thanks to the faith born in me, I experienced such a qualitative change in my professional and human quality that I understood why Uncle Józsi considered church work his life's calling."
The artist's daughter, Margit, still lives in her parents' house in Mosonszentmiklós. The building is a Kádár cube from the outside, and a "studio" with a ceiling height of four meters inside. Here, the life-size sketches that the artist drew on the walls of the churches were made on sheets of paper attached to the wall. Young József Samodai often accompanied his father to church as a child. Sometimes he posed as a model for an anatomical study, sometimes he mixed the colors.
"My father was a man of deep faith, and as the president of the parish in Mosonszentmiklós, he actively participated in the life of the community. Many times as a child I saw him sitting down to pray in church at the beginning of work. He may not be well known, but thanks to his works, the traces of his handiwork will be there in churches for hundreds of years. He kindly gave instructions to everyone and was happy to teach. He lived as a modest person, he also had to be encouraged to put his signature on his works. He placed a small signature on his pictures in a not very ostentatious way. His death came to us suddenly, he was not sick. The fact that he worked with substances harmful to his health, which have now been banned, probably contributed to his loss."
József Samodai's oeuvre was completed by traditional panel paintings, portrait, landscape and still life painting. After the whole day's work at the church, he often went outside and captured a detail of the village. In his portraits, he depicted the depths of the human soul, and his graphics are preserved in Mappány sketches, linocuts, woodcuts and etchings.
A good successor of Giotto, he possessed technical knowledge in panel and wall painting reminiscent of Renaissance masters. One of the most important values of his works is that he identified from the inside with the tasks that fate gave him.
Seeing the expressiveness of his figures often brings to mind the monumentality of El Greco, his works are compositions formulated in a lyrical tone.
In the county of Győr-Moson-Sopron, Csorna, Bársonyos, Hidegség, Lövő, Kapuvár, Rábapordány, Szil, Győr, Árpás, Dénesfa, Fertőszentmiklós, Mecsér, Fertőendréd, Bezenye, Lévl, Arak, Márikálnok, Farád, Sopronkövesd, Kimle, Mosonszentmiklós, Gyarmat, Rabbit, Common Duck, Farád, The churches of Halászi, Feketererdő, Öttevény, Rábapatona, Szany, Abda preserve traces of the hand of József Samodai.
Cover photo: Ádám Gecsei visited the churches where József Samodai worked. He also visited the Church of the Heart of Jesus in Csorna
Source: Kisalföld.hu/Cs. KA
