Júlia Báthory

"I want to be as great an artist as Mihály Munkácsy" - declared the child Zoltán Bohus (1941-2017) one day, a statement that must have sounded rather unlikely in Békéscsaba, a small town in southern Hungary, where most of the population was still living from agriculture.

In 1961, Zoltán Bohus nevertheless applied for admission at the College of Fine Arts, majoring in painting, to make his dreams come true. However, his first attempt seemed to be a failure: he was not accepted. Fortunately, the teachers at the College of Applied Arts saw his work too and György Z. Gács accepted him into the decorative painting department that he headed. But the big leap came in 1966, when the rector of the College decided to start the glass artist department, which had been planned for almost a decade. For this task he invited György Z. Gács, the head of the decorative painting department, which was closed at the same time, to take over the position. He in turn chose Zoltán Bohus to be his TA (teacher assistant).

It was this appointment that turned him into a glass artist. He spent a lifetime teaching at the College of Applied Arts (later MOME), where he played a key role, since he took a lion’s share in the realization of the glass artworks of his master, György Z. Gács, besides organising the teaching activities of the departement. In the 1970s, he gradually took on an increasingly important role in the life of the glass department. After the death of György Z. Gács in 1978, he was officially appointed head of the department, a position he held for almost 40 years until his retirement. The entire approach to university education, and even the setting up of the glass workshop of the College in the Kinizsi Street wing of the Museum of Applied Arts, was the result of Zoltán Bohus' work. Between 1965 and 2017 this workshop functioned in an area almost three times the size of the present one.

"I've been working with glass for a long time because I believe that things like space and time, which are thought to be inexpressible in sculpture, can be approached with this extraordinary material. These ideas have kept me busy for years. For some while, light itself has been the real challenge for me. Is it possible, and how, to capture such an immaterial phenomenon in a sculpture? I will try", said Zoltán Bohus in an interview, whose artistic path was determined by this ars poetica. In 1970 he married Maria Lugossy (1950-2012) who also had a lifelong interest in glass, although she began her career as a jeweller. Although their lives ran in parallel, they both created their own artistic oeuvre in close collaboration, yet independently of each other. Mária Lugossy used the technique of sandblasting to create monumental public spaces and delicate, often figurative works, while Zoltán Bohus always took a constructive, rather architectural approach to his polished and glued compositions.

In addition to his own artistic career, he played a decisive role as a teacher and mentor for practically the whole of contemporary Hungarian glass art. He created the Hungarian studio-glass movement, whose members - despite the Iron Curtain - achieved a resounding success overseas at the Corning Museum's exhibition "New Glass: A Worldwide Survey" in 1979, to which works by Erzsébet Katona, Mária Mészáros and Zsuzsa Vida were invited. The road pioneered by him and his wife made it possible for Hungarian glass art to become part of the international glass art scene, creating opportunities for talents such as László Lukácsi and György Gáspár. Zoltán Bohus was also involved in the founding of the Goszthony Mária International Glass Artists' Centre in Bardudvarnok and the Hungarian Glass Art Society.

It is not surprising that Zoltán Bohus was the glass artist who was elected full member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts (MMA) in 2012. He was awarded the Mihály Munkácsy Prize in 1984, and in 1997 he became Merited Artist of the Republic of Hungary. He received the Kossuth Prize in 2014 and in the same year he was elected Artist of the Nation.