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The writer József R Juhász, a member of the Ethnic Hungarian Writers' Society of Slovakia, which is organising the conference, said the society's members would lay wreaths at Kassák's statue in the main street of Nové Zámky on Thursday afternoon. Afterward, an exhibition of 40 contemporary Hungarian, Slovak and Czech artists will open at the city's art gallery.
On Friday, a multimedia performance entitled Kassák Homage will involve the participation of avant-garde poets and artists arriving from six countries to pay their respects to Kassák. They include Katalin Ladik and Endre Szkárosi from Hungary, Michel Giroud from France, Anat Pick from Israel and Nicola Frangione from Italy.
A conference will be held on Thursday through Saturday and feature presentations by the genetic scientist Endre Czeizel, composer László Sáry, writer Tibor Zalán, literary historian Ferenc Csaplár and art historian Helena Markusová. A symposium will discuss MA, the journal Kassák edited between 1916 and 1925.
Visitors to the events will be shown never-before-seen Kassák collages borrowed from a private collection as well as films on Kassák from the Hungarian Television archives.
Lajos Kassák was born on March 21, 1887. He attended school for only a few years before being apprenticed to a locksmith. He then became a metal worker in Győr and Budapest.
At the age of 20, Kassák began to teach himself to paint and to write poetry. In 1915, he founded A tett (The Act), a journal featuring the work of anti-war artists. When A tett was banned, Kassák founded the avant-garde journal MA (Today), in which he formulated the charter for Hungarian Constructivism.
Source: Múlt-kor / Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
