Péter Cserháti: Hidden Treasures in Woodcarving, Sculpture & Sketches
JOHN REIBETANZ
2012
POETRY
ISBN 978-0-9867097-0-8 (chapbook)
9⅛" × 11½", 120 pp.
Limited edition of 125 numbered copies
OUT OF PRINT
CA$60
Péter Cserháti: Hidden Treasures in Woodcarving, Sculpture & Sketches with ekphrasic poems by John Reibetanz contemplates and celebrates the artistic vision of a man who escaped oppression from Communist Hungary and started anew with a young family in Canada.
It is printed by Gaspereau Press with handmade cover paper from La Papeterie St-Armand, with 65 plates of over 80 photographs, 15 ekphraskic poems written specifically on a work of art, and edited and with an introduction and translations into Hungarian of all text but the poems by Vajay Emőke Cserháti.
¶ No longer regarded as a dying art, woodcarving is seeing a world-wide resurgence. Hidden Treasures is a testament to Péter Cserháti’s creative spirit and his skills as a woodcarver, bridging the gap from when there was a very small market for such art and its re-emergence now as an art form in its own right. Each of the 65 plates in this book exemplifies the mastery and range of Cserháti’s workmanship, spanning from church interiors to furniture components to original works of art. The bright flame that Cserháti brought out of old world traditions, keeping it alive and thriving, is one that he also nurtured in other artists such as myself. With great patience, good humour and the strictest demands for only the highest quality, Cserháti provided what I had been searching for in my own artistic development, and that I am able to pass on into my own pupils, an invaluable gift for which we owe him our most profound thanks. In its myriad revelations Hidden Treasures offers the viewer a most singular gift from one of the world’s finest woodcarvers of our generation — or of any generation. — Gordon Becker
¶ The complementarity of Péter Cserháti’s artwork and the ekphrastic poems by John Reibetanz that distinguishes this collaboration is truly remarkable. Reibetanz’s poems often achieve not only a verbal but also a visual echo of the physical works of art, enhancing them by bringing a sense of temporality to the spatial nature of Cserháti’s sculptures and carvings, contributing a narrative to the visual artist’s silent images. Both are aspects of what Reibetanz views as the ideally collaborative dimension of art’s creation. Yet perhaps the most important common bond linking Cserháti and Reibetanz is their openness to transcendence – to transcendent moments, transcendent visions. Paraphrasing the metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan, “human poetic creation is necessary as a moment of, never a competition with, God’s creation”, the book Peter Cserháti: Hidden Treasures in Woodcarving, Sculpture and Sketches is a splendid embodiment of this statement. Both Cserháti’s superb art pieces and the verbal dexterity, erudite allusions, and musical rhythms of Reibetanz’s ekphrastic poems carry the gravitas of necessity in moments invoking, but not competing with, transcendence. A gorgeous book where the visual artistry of Cserháti has found a fitting match in the artistry of Reibetanz’s poetry. — Ruth Roach Pierson
Péter Cserháti was born in Budapest, Hungary, and graduated in 1958 from the Fine and Applied Arts School in Budapest with a diploma in decorative wood sculpture. Privately, he worked in painting, and he studied drawing and sculpting in clay as a member of the Guttenberg and Derkovits art groups, as well as attending the summer art school in Zebegény. In 1969 he was granted the distinction of Master Woodcarver and in the same year escaped with his wife from communist Hungary. They settled in Toronto where he established his own company designing and carving church and residential interiors as well as mass production for furniture companies in traditional and modern styles. Significant woodcarvings have also found their way to destinations in the United States, including New York, California, and Texas. His paintings can be found in collections in Canada and Europe, and in the Canadian Embassy permanent collection in Budapest.
John Reibetanz was born in New York City, and grew up in the eastern United States and Canada. He studied at the City University of New York and Princeton University, and has written essays on Elizabethan drama and on modern and contemporary poetry, as well as a book on King Lear and translations of modern German poetry. He is a member of the League of Canadian Poets, and has published eight full collections and three chapbooks, been shortlisted for the national ReLit Poetry Award, and won First Prize in the international Petra Kenney Poetry Competition. His poems have appeared in such magazines as Poetry (Chicago), The Paris Review, and The Malahat Review, and he has also been a winner in the national poetry competitions conducted by The Fiddlehead and Vallum. He lives in Toronto and is Professor Emeritus of Victoria College at the University of Toronto.