Szeged's first fire wall painting commemorates glass painter Manó Róth and the creator of the glass windows of the Szeged synagogue in Hajnóczy Street as part of a European Union project. The huge mural was created by two well-known Szeged painters, Ákos Marton and Leó Vinkó Muralpaint.hu was realized by muralists.
When fame catches up
The artists were painting the Szeged Puppet Theater when they were approached about the fire wall project in Hajnóczy Street. Tourinform had already watched their work before and they wanted to expand their Rediscover project with a street art thread, which they were entrusted with. Fortunately, quite a few reference works of a similar caliber were published in the last few years, so they got to them quickly.
They really liked the initiative, since there is no mural of this size, on a firewall, in the city center and they have been waiting for a request of this kind for a long time. They were confident that this could start a wave like the Colorful City project in Budapest, but for this it is necessary to gain the trust of the city and the people in Szeged as well, so that they see that street art and graffiti are not the same as vandalism.
Already at the time of the inquiry, they received fixed reference points, which were related to the New Synagogue within the Rediscover project. Fortunately, it's a rather outstandingly ornate and spectacular building, with many fine art elements, so it was easy to see. Few people know the work of Róth Manó in general, even though it is closely linked to the New Synagogue in Szeged, which is why it was chosen. Szilvi Ács and Éva Korponai protested a couple of times in the office of Tourinform, and that's how the decision was made, in favor of the clipped rose window composition.
Creation process
We painted the mural on roughly 150-200 square meters of wall space. Neither the concrete wall nor whether there would be any apartment buildings that would agree to a painting of such a size, were not exactly available. This has been a long time in the past, but luckily the attitude of the owners was very flexible and positive.
First we had to repair the wall, as it was in a pretty bad state. It has a strong adhesive bridge layer, which provides a very strong base for further painting. We were most afraid of the background and the rose window depicting the synagogue, since we could neither project it nor look at it from a distance, due to the neighboring building nearby. We had to edit, measure, level, do math and make a lot of stencils to make sure that every motif was the same. The building of the synagogue, the background and the flower designs were also painted with stencils and airbrush paints. It can't be felt from below, but we had to cut 3m high stencils in order to eliminate asymmetry at such a size.
You have to see the whole process very clearly in your head, what should come next. We had to look at cranes, which are suitable for painting in such a special place, since inside the yard there are half-roofs under the walls, the yard is narrow, and there are many parked cars. A few years ago, we might not have taken on this kind of work, as the responsibility is quite big, you can't think, you have to know.
"We were afraid of quite a lot, but in the end everything went very smoothly. A rather unpleasant factor when painting at such a height, because of the rollers and spray paints, a lot of paint gets into the air and scatters in the size of dust particles over a fairly large area, which seemed like an insoluble problem due to the surrounding parked cars, but fortunately this did not happen. And of course, the snowfall wouldn't have been missed if he had stayed at home"
- says Ákos
The huge fire wall was completed in about 3 weeks, during which time 30-40 cans and 50-80L of outdoor paint and coloring were used.
The feedback was very positive, but this is perhaps primarily a praise of Manó Róth's work. Artists see people becoming very open about firewall painting. In this part of the country, it is rare to find murals of this size.
