This section brings together depictions of the human figure that cannot be classified among historical personalities, monuments or works on religious subjects. These works reflect Bory Jenő’s more personal creative world, and convey characteristic ideas relating to human life, art, love or the act of creation.
Alongside historical personalities, monuments and works on religious subjects, Bory Jenő’s oeuvre also gives a significant place to sculptures that are not directly connected with a historical event or a particular person. These works are especially personal imprints of the artist’s way of thinking, emotional world and creative experiments. Some bear allegorical meaning, while others present the ideals of human relationships, love, artistic creation or the builder of the human world.
In these sculptures, Bory Jenő was able to develop his imagination more freely than in public monuments made to commission. He did not have to conform to strict historical or iconographic expectations, so emotion, movement and the beauty of form could be given greater prominence in the compositions. Several works occupied the artist for decades, and consequently the same subject often appeared in several versions, in different sizes and materials.
The collection at Bory Castle is particularly rich in these works. Visitors may encounter them in various spaces throughout the castle. Works such as The Play of Balance and The Kiss not only demonstrate Bory’s technical knowledge and feeling for form, but also offer an insight into the artist’s personal realm of ideals. Alongside the monumental historical works, these sculptures thus reveal the more human and lyrical side of his oeuvre.
