Physician Bela L and lawyer Eva V met in 1945. Numerus Clausus laws had forced Bela to leave for Italy in the 1930s to study medicine in Bologna. Upon his return to Hungary he was taken to forced labor on the Russian front, Eva was deported to Terezin. They both survived. Both art lovers, Bela was an amateur painter, Eva studied painting when young. While talented, she thought not talented enough to pursue a professional career in art.
They had married and lived in proverbial harmony for fifty years.
Bela spent his childhood in Hodmezovasarhely, Eva was born in neighboring Szeged. Although spending most of their lives together in Budapest, they had always remained attached to the atmosphere, art and local history of the two towns in Hungary’s Great Plain. Several works of Vasarhely painters hang on their walls.
Eva especially enjoyed Margit Kovacs’s joyful, blue-eyed, folkish ceramic figurines. Bela presented her a Margit Kovacs sculpture for every 10-year wedding anniversary. They celebrated five such decennials together. In just three weeks of each other, they both passed away in 1998.
