Ágnes Lukács (11 November 1920,

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

– 12 September 2016, Budapest) was a

Hungarian-Jewish The history of the Jews in Hungary dates back to at least the Kingdom of Hungary, with some records even predating the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in 895 CE by over 600 years. Written sources prove that Jewish communities lived i ...

painter, graphic artist and secondary school teacher. She was the daughter of the painter Gyula Lukács.

Life

Ágnes Lukács artistic talent was noticed early on and she was considered a child prodigy because of her drawings. She was five years old when the first children's drawings of her were exhibited. During her youth several of her drawings appeared in various daily and weekly newspapers. From 1939-1944 she studied fine arts and art education at the Budapest Academy of Arts under Gyula Kandó and István Szönyi. She graduated as an art teacher. In July 1944 she was deported to

Auschwitz-Birkenau Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

. Because of her knowledge of German, Ágnes Lukács was able to work in a writing detachment where she had to keep lists of the prisoner population. Occasionally she made drawings for functionary prisoners and SS members for an extra slice of bread. From December 1944 onwards, she was transferred to various subcamps of the concentration camps Groß-Rosen and

Neuengamme Neuengamme was a network of Nazi concentration camps in Northern Germany that consisted of the main camp, Neuengamme, and more than 85 satellite camps. Established in 1938 near the village of Neuengamme in the Bergedorf district of Hamburg, th ...

and finally liberated by US troops in Salzwedel in April 1945. She returned to Budapest in July 1945, where she met her parents, who had survived the

Budapest ghetto The Budapest Ghetto was a Nazi ghetto set up in Budapest, Hungary, where Jews were forced to relocate by a decree of the Government of National Unity led by the fascist Arrow cross party during the final stages of World War II. The ghetto existed f ...

. In the hope of better political and social conditions, Ágnes Lukács joined the Communist Party in 1945 and worked periodically in the teachers' union. From then on she taught art in two schools. In 1955 she went to the Endre Sagvari School, an elite grammar school of the university, where also trainee teachers were taught. In addition, she illustrated for international magazines for many years. In 1977 Ágnes Lukács retired and was able to devote herself more to painting, which she had only been able to do part-time before. She had numerous exhibitions at home and abroad. Ágnes Lukács oral history interview as a Holocaust survivor is preserved on video in the Visual History Archive of the

USC Shoah Foundation USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education, formerly Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making audio-visual interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Hol ...

. Suffering from dementia, Agnes Lukacs died in 2016 in a Budapest nursing home.

Artistic career

Lukács created many drawings, collages, graphics and paintings. She is particularly known for works in which she processed the memories of the concentration camps. In 1946 the Socialist Zionist Party ICHUD published the album "Auschwitz Nöi Tábor" (The Auschwitz Women's Camp). Published on the first anniversary of the liberation of the Budapest Ghetto, this pictorial account of Holocaust survivor Lukács depicts the artist's own experiences in the Auschwitz Women's Camp. In the folder with twenty-four grim illustrations there is also a depiction of a closely knit group of women who embrace each other and thus seem to warm or comfort each other. Those standing outside try to get as close as possible to the others. The title "Összebújva" (Close together) underlines the statement of the drawing and refers to the representation of female solidarity against the background of radical violence. In this cycle, Ágnes Lukács makes multiple use of the motif of the group as well as the means of detail, thus condensing the visual narratives of

forced labour Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...

, selection, hunger, violence and death. Her preliminary sketches, made in autumn 1945, were lost, as were the stones on which she drew. The motif "Összebújva" has accompanied Lukács throughout her life and she has reinterpreted it herself in numerous variations. The artist Burkhard Schittny was inspired by this motif in 2019 and honoured her work in his video

performance A performance is an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. Management science In the work place ...

'Dignity-Tribute to Ágnes Lukács'. In her late work, she not only addressed the horrors of the Holocaust, but also repeatedly devoted herself to landscape painting, still lifes and portraits. Her works have been exhibited both nationally and internationally. In 1994, th
Jewish Museum
in Droste/Westphalia presented drawings and paintings by her. An exhibition at the Jenny Marx House in Salzwedel and at the concentration camp memorial in Neuengamme followed in 1999.

References

External links

* Ágnes Lukács, Biography at Offenes Archi

* Ágnes Lukács at Neuengamm

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lukács, Ágnes 1920 births 2016 deaths 20th-century Hungarian women artists 21st-century Hungarian women artists 20th-century Hungarian painters 21st-century Hungarian painters Artists from Budapest Hungarian women painters Hungarian Jews Jewish painters Auschwitz concentration camp survivors Neuengamme concentration camp survivors Hungarian University of Fine Arts alumni