Géza Vida

Gheza or Géza Vida, also known as Grigore ( hu, Vida Géza; February 28, 1913 – May 11, 1980), was a Romanian–Hungarian sculptor, engraver, industrial worker and communist militant, one of the most renowned artists of Maramureș region. The descendant of ethnic Romanian and Slovak miners, he was born in the Hungarian segment of Austria-Hungary. Raised by his mother after his father's death in World War I, he received financial support from local benefactors, who cultivated his artistic skill, particularly as a woodcarver. A citizen of Romania after the union of 1918, he was forced to drop out of school by economic circumstances, and worked for years in various industries and businesses, while also discovering his passion for beekeeping and gardening. He was drawn into far-left politics during the Great Depression, when he came to be influenced by radical artists such as Alexandru Ziffer, Aurel Popp, Vasile Kazar and Iosif Klein, who also introduced him to avant-garde experimentation. Vida was co-opted into the Union of Communist Youth and subsequently the Communist Party, producing propaganda art for both; this activity led to his temporary arrest in 1932 and 1933. A labor organizer, he helped establish the Artists' Trade Union and its branch in Baia Mare.

Having trained as a gunner in the Romanian Land Forces, Vida made repeated attempts at joining the International Brigades fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Though imprisoned and expelled upon illegally crossing the border with Czechoslovakia, he resumed the effort and finally reached Republican Spain in early 1938. He served for a few months under Nicolae Cristea and Valter Roman, before the Brigades were withdrawn from the Battle of the Ebro. Vida survived the retreat into France, surrendering to the National Gendarmerie. Vida moved between French internment camps, finally being sent to Gurs; he also continued to work as a propaganda artist, reaching an international audience. A participant in prisoner revolts before and after the fall of France, he was dispatched as a laborer to Nazi Germany, but eventually made his way to Northern Transylvania.

As a Romanian national in Regency Hungary, Vida was under continuous supervision. His studying at the Hungarian School of Fine Arts was interrupted by stints in a labor battalion, though he managed to escape during the Siege of Budapest. He rejoined the Romanian Army and, by the end of World War II, was stationed in Skalica. Returning to Baia Mare, in his thirties he emerged as a favorite artist of Romania's communist regime and became a deputy in the Great National Assembly, but voiced criticism of the regime's artistic standards. He repeatedly tried to resist the rise of Socialism Realism, and depicted Expressionism as a more authentically revolutionary current.

Vida's views were vindicated in the 1960s, when his synthesis of folk art and Expressionism was more fully assimilated by the communist establishment. He won both controversy and praise for his series of monumental pieces, including his Soldier's Memorial of Carei and his homage to the victims of the . Made a full member of the Communist Party Central Committee in 1971, and a corresponding member of the Romanian Academy three years later, he was awarded numerous distinctions, including the Star of the Socialist Republic of Romania. In his last years, he drifted away from the Expressionist standard to absorb more influences from handicrafts and religious art.

Biography

Origins and early life

In some Communist Party records, Vida was described as having " Magyar ethnicity".Dobre ''et al.'', p. 616 However, the artist's paternal ancestors were ethnic Romanians from the Austrian Empire: grandfather Simion Vida was a Greek Catholic from Iapa, working at the hammermill of Nagybánya (Baia Mare). His fifth child, Iosif, who worked his entire life as a miner, married a Rozalia Krupiczer of Cavnic. Her father was a Slovak colonist to the region.Bodea, p. 9 Gheza was born on February 28, 1913 at Nagybánya, as Baia Mare was then known. The city was at the time in Szatmár County, Kingdom of Hungary (itself part of Austria-Hungary). His exact birthplace was the family home, located very near to Valea Roșie Mine. The Hungarian-sounding name "Gheza" (or "Géza") was selected to honor a workmate of Iosif Vida's. Rozalia preferred to call him "Victor", since he turned out to be her only surviving child; the couple had had seven other children.Marinescu & Brezovszki, p. 6

Despite being afflicted with lung problems, Iosif was drafted into World War I, and was heavily wounded on the Serbian Front; he died in his home in 1915. This forced Rozalia to seek employment as a housemaid in the home of Teofil Dragoș, a Romanian jurist and politician, where Gheza would spend his early infancy and early childhood. According to biographer Gheorghe I. Bodea, the future sculptor grew up as a socialist by witnessing the miners' strikes and protests during the Aster Revolution and the Soviet experiment; Dragoș's home was located outside Baia Mare prison, where most protesters were interned during the Hungarian–Romanian War.

Following the region's union with Romania, Vida was sent to the new Romanian school of Baia Sprie. Headmaster Alexandru Mouje, who was a passionate woodcarver, channeled the boy's creativity, encouraging him to create statuettes of animals (most of which are now lost). Gheza also enjoyed traveling into the Gutâi Mountains, which he much later described as a "fairy-tale land". He took up rock collecting, and on one occasion was nearly killed after sliding into a mine shaft to pick up a more unusual stone. In 1923, he created his first complex works in wood, depicting peasants at their wedding and funeral ceremonies.Bodea, p. 14 He had by then become encouraged by the artistic boom of his native city: the Baia Mare School

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