dátum: 03.12.                                                 fájl: iras/html/india.htm                                                      C.7521

Thomas.BAIN@cec.eu.int 2003.12.19. 12:28:02 +1h-kor írta:
Dear Mr Váli,
I have a paining of yours I have heard you want it back. It is a sketching you did in the mid 80's, and gave to Petri Györge. I bought it off his son....At the time I was lecturing at the Kögäs.
The painting has a large black cloud across the top of it, is long, and dominantly grey/black. It seems to symbolize divided Europe. It has a title on the back of it: "these last days" or "these recent days".
Actually, I am quite attached to the history of the painting, the meaning of the 80s (when I travelled extensively across Central and Eastern Europe), the vision of despair in the face of a divided Europe. I have also lived a 7 year depression, so the black cloud at the top is also meaningful to me. But the painting does not have much aesthetic value, most people don't like it. For the moment the paining is in the basement of a flat in Brussels, packed, as I have moved to India.
Thomas Bain
Development Project Manager Delegation of the European Commission to India, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, The Maldives. 65 Golf Links New Delhi 110 003 India

Dear Mr. Bain! (Excuse my poor English.)
You made me very happy with Yours letter. I administer my pictures strictly. (My lifetime-game to think me an important painter in Hungary) I follow the being-place all of my works.  Probable Yours graphic: Utolsó éveiben (In his last Years) opus: B/80/33 collage, on gray paper, 40 x 90 cm, framed, 1980., It was exhibited in Budapest, Kis-Duna Galéria 1980. 04. 10 In 1982.01.20. I present it to the greatest Hungarian Poet, György Petri, to commemorate his new Poetry-Book. After he separate, the graphic remain at his previous wife. Petri died in 2000. juli 16. Since many years it is written on the back side all of my works
"DEAR COLLECTOR PLEASE SEND ME YOUR NAME AND ADDRESS. I would like always to know the place of my works and send You invitations to my exhibitions.
                            PLEASE DO NOT TAKE MY WORK ABROAD.
                            Except public collections, museums.
                            Thank You."
Of course te life is more reacher, never 100% perfect. I have about 40 pictures abroad. Never mind that! Especially, when I can't do anything.
I'm not so happy not because the grapics is in a basement, but that it do not live, it is not used. Have You any purpose by that? You live continously in India, if I may ask that? Be so kind to control on my web-site, that it is yours graphic, about I have written.
deske.hu ---- 05. GRAFIKÁK ----- 1980 ----- 80/33
Thank You. God help and consecrate You by the occasion of Christmas! I hope You lost the depression forever.
Váli Dezső
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Dear Mr Váli,
Your English is most certainly excused. I am myself dyslexic, so you can imagine the hotchpotch I make out of the three languages I speak.
You should know that I knew Petri Gy. quite well, I used to go meet him in the house of the architect Nagy Balint. I acquired the painting of Adam, his son, who wanted to go on holiday in Croatia, but had no money. My mother having been a painter/sculptor until she started a company, I was brought up in an "atelier" from 0 to 12. I could see that the painting had a lot of artistic qualities. even if it is a bit bleak.
I was returning to Budapest after a fact finding mission in 1988, only to find that the early transition was socially difficult I lived in Budapest with Sulyok Miklos and family, and was interested in the philosophies of Tamas Gaspar Miklos. I was supposed to be writing a thesis, but the truth is that the development of Hungary was so interesting at the time, that I did not work on it..
I have moved to 6 countries by now, since I left the UK when I was twelve. The painting is now with my permanent stuff with my parents in Nîmes, France. If I get more than a temporal contract with the European Commission, I will get my removals paid for, and I will try to regroup my belongings. As for the moment I am working for the foreign service of the European Commission I do not know where I will be next, in fact if I stay with this service I am hoping to go to Argentina. On the other hand, I am trying to get a job with UNESCO because I want to return to Paris, where I was brought up in my teens. So you understand: there is no chance of my knowing where I am to be. I hope to stay another two years in India, this would be the limit of my contract. This will just give me enough time to learn Hindi.
In some  ways, you could say that I belong to some kind of a Hungarian Diaspora: the ”non-Hungarian” Hungarians, close to FIDESZ and the SZDSZ (in those they were quite close, I also hoped that there would be some possibility to go beyond the nationalist-cosmopolitan divide in the Hungarian politics. It all fell apart in the face of the pressure of the elections in 1994.) I spent three years in Budapest, and my first wife is a Hungarian author from Marosvasahelyi
Actually, I am very happy to be in "Orient", it is like a holiday for me from all these problems of European citizen's rights (my speciality), and I am learning new things every day (Hindi, Hinduism, Sustainable development...). All in all, compared with the problems in Asia, European problems seem quite benign. Here two thirds of the population earn less than 2 dollars a day. That is almost one quarter of the world’s population.
The painting is significant to me because of the 7 years of depression with my first wife. The black bar across the top of it recently the incapacity of the depressed person to get out of oneself, the barbed wire that goes across the middle of the painting is like the torn and uncomfortable feelings inside. Strange enough, the painting reflects my interiority in the 1990s, when most of the West seemed to think that everything was sorted out.
Do you remember the Democratic Charter?
Best Regards,
Thomas Bain
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Feladó: Váli Dezső vaali@dpg.hu
Dátum: 2003.12.23. 20:45:48 +1h
Téma: Re: I have a paining of yours I hear you want back

Dear Thomas, I think really interested is Yours life! I am like cat, to stay at home, it is good. Travel to abroad maximum 3-6 days...
When You travel through Hungary, if You don’t mind, visit me in my atelier! Reading yours letter., I think You have see my homepage, and yours work of mine. It took make these homepage more than 2 years. (4500 file), and I am very proud at that.
Yes, if You know Tamás Gáspár Miklós, You are an adopted Hungarian. Friends of mind worked in Demokratic Charta, I live out of the politik.
Best regards!:
VD

Nîmes, December 2007:
Dear Mr Váli,
Thank you for you kind comments. I have left the European Commission after 5 years, and am Dean in a management school in Delhi. I have „dropped” off the European pre-occupations, and the civil service. I still militate for the rights of people with disabilities in Europe, and was active in the European Commission requesting more support in this area. Everything is very busy in India. The country is taking-off. I do not have so many ties with Hungary now, I am married to an Indian, and we are about to have our first child. I suppose that Hungary no more looks like the country I knew 15 years ago.
Please come and visit us in New Delhi, we have plenty of space. The size of India an its populations make it an adventure for the imagination.
The paining is still with my parents in France, but I should be organising a removal to India soon. 

Don’t worry so much about your English: the essence of communication is in the meaning, I can read through your English, having taught the language quite often.
Best Regards,

Thomas Bain