Alkotás. A Magyar Müvészeti Tanács folyóirata. (Creation. The Journal of the Hungarian Council of the Arts)

Budapest: Alkotás, 1947 Folio 30 x 24 cm, wrappers 12 numbers in 6 issues, year 1, and 4 numbers in 2 issues, year 2, 1947-48 (all published). Original wrappers bound in cloth. Lajos Kassák made an ambitious effort to present a world-class art journal from Budapest under the banner of the Hungarian Council of the Arts, launching it in January 1947. Championing the postwar avant-garde visual art emerging both in Hungary and Western Europe, it had an internationalist approach and attempted to avoid political polarization in contrast to his prewar efforts with MA, DOKUMENTUM, and MUNKA. With his fellow literary associates (Tibor Déry, Sándor Weöres, Ernö Kállai, etc) the intent was to renew communications with the art capitals of Western Europe and the USA and generate open currents of exchange, still under the banner of a socialist humanism but looking westward. Like Ma and Dokumentum, the journal looked at the international art scene as well as the developments in Hungary. The new art presented in these pages, especially that of Hungarians Ferenc Martyn, Béla Ban, István Farkas, Gyula Hincz and others, demonstrates a freshness and expressive freedom that would be short-lived in Hungary, with the last issue followed by the suppression of all free public discourse by the establishment of a police state when the communists cinched power that year. This would drive most of the Hungarian contributors in these issues into exile, incarceration or worse. This set clothbound, preserving the original wrappers and fairly fresh. Uncommon, with only three sets noted by worldcat in North America.