Depicting Working Girls in József Koszta’s Paintings

Abstract

Depicting Working Girls in József Koszta’s Paintings.

In the paper I analyze some pieces of József Koszta's paintings, which depict peasant girls. My goal is to analyse the idea of the child in a rural society in an archaic state; I strive to create parallels between the ethnography and the history of childhood concepts. I try to make my thesis more sophisticated by using the methods of iconography and iconology (Erwin Panofsky). I consider the aspects of the content-description, the composition analysis, the pedagogical anthropology and the history of the idea of the child in order to make conclusions with regard the idea of the child. Koszta was a master of creating melancholical atmosphere and he expressed his own world by his paintings (he was a representative of expressive realism). His paintings depict hard rural life and the lifestyle of peasants at that time, therefore his paintings don't show the joyful moments of childhood, but he present the aspects and motives which make children and become quiet and resigned women.