Sketch (1928)

Lajos Vajda spent his childhood in Zala County, from 1916 in Serbia, and from 1923 in Szentendre. In 1927 he enrolled at the Budapest College of Fine Arts where, following the educational reform of Károly Lyka, he worked under the guidance of István Csók, who encouraged experimentation and the search for an independent path. At the College he became friends with Béla Hegedűs, Dezső Korniss, Sándor Trauner, György Kepes and Ernő Schubert, with whom he founded the group of progressive young artists. They were left-wing in their worldview and constructivist in their artistic guidelines, and were briefly associated with the Kassák-Circle. Vajda made his debut with a still life at the National Salon in 1928. The event caused an uproar in conservative art circles and the students who took part, including Vajda, were expelled from the college by a ministerial committee of art teachers. The "expelled" artists tried to perform together at the Tamás Gallery, but by the end of 1930 they had also broken off with the Kassák-Circle and most of them continued their work abroad. 

In the Sketch (1928), shown above, Vajda experiments with the Cubism, Russian Constructivism and especially Kassák's pictorial architecture program. The drawing that fills the majority of the sheet resembles a 1922 composition by the Hungarian avant-garde master in Vienna (see under images), with the inscription MA (the title of Kassák's former banned journal) in several places, and Vajda's attempt to transcribe his name in cyrillic (Vajda) at the bottom of the paper. Next to it are the silhouettes of a bottle, a table and a guitar, familiar from Cubist still lifes. This is an important step in Vajda's art, as he himself was following the destructive and constructive programme of anti-art in his conception of art, and was looking for the most appropriate forms and means of expression for the new art.