MA Group
Hungarian group of artists and writers, active c. 1916 to 1926. It was associated with the journal MA, whose name was derived from the Hungarian for ‘today’, but it also refers to the movement Hungarian Activism (Hung.: Magyar Aktivizmus; see ACTIVISTS). Founded by the writer and artist LAJOS KASSÁK, MA first appeared in November 1916, and from then until it was banned on 14 July 1919 it was published in Budapest, at first edited solely
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MA Group
Hungarian group of artists and writers, active c. 1916 to 1926. It was associated with the journal MA, whose name was derived from the Hungarian for ‘today’, but it also refers to the movement Hungarian Activism (Hung.: Magyar Aktivizmus; see ACTIVISTS). Founded by the writer and artist LAJOS KASSÁK, MA first appeared in November 1916, and from then until it was banned on 14 July 1919 it was published in Budapest, at first edited solely by Kassák and by 1917 by Béla Uitz also. From 1 May 1920 until its demise in mid-1926 it was published in Vienna under Kassák’s sole editorship. It was the most important forum for Hungarian Activism, and over the years its members included Sándor Bortnyik, Péter Dobrovic (1890–1942), Lajos Gulácsy, János Kmetty, János Máttis Teutsch, László Moholy-Nagy, Jószef Nemes Lampérth, Béla Uitz among others. The first issue had a Cubist cover by the Czech artist Vincenc Benes (see Kassák, p. 127) and an article by Kassák entitled ‘A plakát es az uj festészet’ (‘The poster and the new painting’, MA, i/1, pp. 2–4), which set the revolutionary tone of the group. The article suggested that painting should aspire to the same aggressive power as that achieved by posters: ‘The new painter is a moral individual, full of faith and a desire for unity! And his pictures are weapons of war!.’ Many members of the MA group did in fact produce posters during the short Communist regime under Béla Kun in 1919; Uitz, for example, designed Red Soldiers, Forward! (1919; Budapest, N.G.).
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