Cultural and Art Centre of Lazarea

The founding triad, Zöld Lajos, Gaál András and Márton Árpád have decided since the first years: “The Lăzarea art colony should be an open window to the world, it shall become the cross-section of the contemporary Romanian arts, by accepting and honoring all styles and trends.[…] Everyone paints, draws and carves whatever they wish at Lăzarea.“. An interesting coincidence was, that Gaál András stated after the very first closure in 1974: “we invite and accept visual artists only“.

Until 1988, when the colony was shut down by the communist regime, our collection had 616 items, which is still expanding. Today, we have 2117 pieces. Another interesting aspect of this collection is, that it is still whole, no pieces have ever been taken away, as it happend to the collections of many other art colonies throughout the country.

The events in december 1989 ushered a new era in Romania. Culture, as other aspects of life have changed dramatically. In the first half of the nineties, the Romanian artists’ society has been polarized by the new environment and media, and thus, they could leave behind the restrictions imposed by the former communist regime, benefiting from the support of various cultural organizations.

In the second half of the nineties, Romania began to see the appearance of international festivals, and contemporary artistic biennals, which at the start of the new century have grown quickly in numbers. The 1998 camp, lead by the Túlsó P’Art artist group was the major change in the camp’s concept. There are no more monolithic blocks, such as oriental and occidental. The globalization takes over, changing the occidental art, making it more sensitive to innovation. The drawback of this is, for the artists on the periphery, that they have to be vary for the ways which can bring them to attention. Those in the center have a lot more chance to become famous. For a lively organization, however, if it doesn’t concentrate on one era and it doesn’t think retrospectively, being aware of every change is a must. It is very important to cite the very eloquent statement of Erőss István: “Removing the local vs. universal, the hierarchical relation between periphery and center, from the context of this colony, and to become part of the international community, is only possible with carefully and patiently built relations”. In the past ten years, we had many European and far-eastern artist participating on the Korkép colony – boasting complete style liberty – organized by Siklódi Zsolt and Erős István. Many Transylvanian artists are invited to events abroad.

A new milestone has been reached by the colony in 2014. Administration changed, and the ownership of the castle which was the home of the colony, has been returned to its former owners as a result of court orders. Due to these changes and the lack of consensus, the camp had to leave the castle, but activity kept going on. Despite setbacks, in the period of 2014-2017, our collection grew with another 177 pieces.

Keeping the openness imagined by the founders, and which became a local brand, we accepted a rich multitude of styles and trends. We are working on organizing cultural and contemporary art events, concentrating on medial and conceptual styles.