Oldalátfedés

The master finished his work – Gyula Bocz 1937-2003 | Hetedhéthatár

„Sheets of rain pound the earth hard, and enfold me like a white shroud.
Sheets of rain pound the earth soft, while I dissolve into the fog.”
(Ottó Orbán)

Gyula Bocz

Gyula Bocz has died. It is painful, and we cannot ease the pain by saying that he is gone. But in a sense, Gyula Bocz is not gone. He stayed where he was. His garden – which without him will always seem empty and dead, with its distorted shadow of the trees that died with him – indicates not only his non-existence, but also his presence.
His ashes, scattered in Pécs, Villány and Hosszúhetény, are carried by the wind from the hills, washed into the ground by rain. His face is covered by snow. He mingles with the earth to which he was so strongly attached, in which he was rooted, from which he was taken; and he mingles with the sky. One with nature, as he was one with it when he lived.

Spiral

Earth and sky; matter and soul; bondage and freedom – for him there was never a conflict. His fate and his work were not a series of choices, fashions, trends, his path was not a quest or a wandering. His life’s work is a constant search for wholeness. He revealed again and again the wholeness of the world, of nature and of God. With great care and attention to detail, he polished to perfection the tiniest snail, carved stars in stone, carved mountains. He did not adapt to place or age. His sculptures create space and time themselves.

Snail Shell

The Bird and the Spiral do not “decorate” but (re)interpret and construct the Szársomlyó Hill; his stone blocks do not “demonstrate” tectonics but move the earth themselves; his Snail Shell and Frozen Bud do not “depict” eternity but themselves freeze time; his Cross does not “illustrate” grief but causes living pain. He was never lost in the details: he became one with them, and he was never afraid of the “whole”: he was one with it. He loved the earth, the wind, the rain, the sun, the stars – he is now one with them. What he created is a whole world. Not incomplete, not imperfect. The master has finished his work, he has become one with it, and now – on the many days – he rests. It is well. Yet it is very painful. And yet I miss him very much.

Written by: Péter Muráth
Source: Hetedhéthatár