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Kati’s House
Whoever talks of Kati can’t help mentioning her house. It’s recurrent. It’s hopless. A magnet for words, for memories. The conversation inevitably takes off from exterior images and takes us to the inside of her house, where she lived for 50 years, almost since she arrived in Mexico as a Spanish refugee, wife of José Horna, hiding her Hungarian nationality. “To enter into Kati’s house was to feel wrapped in a magic world where the things that would happen could only happen there, and where there was a combination of magical elements which derived both from her creative art and her personality”, says Enrique Creel, who met Kati in Cuautla at the end of the fifties, in the house of the sculptor Angela Gurría and who, since then, became one of her closest friends. “She loved organizing meetings in her house, she always lived in the same place, in Tabasco street. That house had a total atmosphere, there were many doves and cats, it was an atmosphere in which you felt – differing from the street – as if you were in the center of Europe for the way in which it was arranged, nothing elegant and relatively poor, but with a fabulous atmosphere”, remembers the painter Manuel Felguérez, who met her when she first arrived from Paris in 1956. “For a time her liveliness decayed drastically, after the earthquake of 85, and that caused her to feel a sort of insecurity, especially because her house fell down”, said Angela Gurría. “Kati’s house fell down about 10 times and she would always rebuild it, but it made her suffer a lot”. “Everything in her house is an extension of herself, nothing is spare and nothing is missing. She had a personal relationship with the objects because in each and every one of her things lies her identity: the objects were her”, comments Estanislao Ortiz, who was her first student in San Carlos and then shared the class with her. “She even had a great relationship with the textures of her house, the peeling of the walls, the eaten-away doors...” “She said that she was the boss in her house and that she managed all that had to be done in the house... but at the end she was angry with her house that kept going down, just like her”, says Braulio, who arrived in Kati’s life as a mason – “artisan”, Kati used to correct – who had to repair the damages to her house made by the construction of the building behind it, and ended up being the last of her great friends and who looked after her in her last few months of life. Kati Horna’s work can talk for her. There are her photos, her press reports, her war images, her series and her work for magazines and publications. But a part of her is hiding. Part of Kati is in her house, even without the magic of her person. We have to cross the threshold.
Estanislao was overwhelmed: “Her house was a personal space where no one she didn’t want o didn’t know was allowed in”. It is to close your eyes and imagine, only imagine, the reunions that she shared with people so apparently different but so similar in the dimensions of affection that they shared. There are the discussions with her great friend Leonora Carrington and with Remedios Varo, the demands towards her students that showed their work through Estanislao when she was no longer able to personally go to San Carlos, the intensity of doing what they pleased with the young painters who were counter-current, the birthday cake for her great friend and confidant Braulio, the garibaldis that Katy bought in El Globo to treat Angela Gurría in her onomastics, the conversations that the banker Enrique Creel kept like treasure, the words about music and poetry with the cardinal Darío Miranda, and the long nights and hours spent talking and discussing. Katy was a magician, in the sense that she lived, moved, resolved or worried about magical problems. Both her photography and her art objects were in the same surrealistic current, which she followed not so much as a movement, but for the internal magic that she had, the magic that made reality into a dream and which enabled us to live a world of dreams with her reality. Creatively, she could transform reality into a different reality and that for me is called magic. Few people know, although she seemed to be married to her fantasies with a creative spirit, about her interest for vampires. Not the Hollywood vampire, but that in the center of Europe. For example we talked about the vampire as the dead but not dead, and this has implications on the way of life and the way in which to perceive life. If I relate this to the Hungarian roots of Kati, I feel that the image of the vampire that she was interested in, was like a symbol of Hungary. Hungary lived inside her, but died in the things that happened. She left Hungary very young, conserving her memories, that is the Hungary that is still alive. But she saw how Hungary died and so she suffered a lot for this Hungary that she was never to see again, and on the other hand, it is the dead Hungary that she resuscitates. Goulash is a little like vampire blood. When I say that Kati was a magic being, I’m not talking about witchery or things like that. She was a magic being, totally detached from reality. She created her own reality made up of certain roots and memories, reminiscences that she wanted to conserve and a group of windows that she opened up through her dreams. She lived in her own reality and therefore produced creative pieces and made art from her photography as she wanted to transmit the dream to reality, how to change reality for this dream, or give reality the talisman of dreams to make it visible.We would choose a subject of conversation, the first to pop into mind, we would start talking and then end up lost in a world of fantasies. We lived what could be fantastic literature...
Ángela Gurría: a teacher of life I met Kati in 1959. I was interviewed and told that a photographer was going to come. Kati arrived and stayed in my life. More than a person, Kati was a real character full of magic, from her attire, her physical features, little girl expression, foreign accent and badly pronounced Spanish. She was a very intelligent and generous person who enriched anybody with her thoughts, a teacher of life who always helped me to solve problems in a poetic and philosophical way. She always had a solution for everything, as problems always seemed miniscule in comparison to what she experienced in the Second World War and in the Spanish Civil War. Despite her strength, Kati used to get very sad with problems such as pollution and was capable of getting distressed for the perforation of an oil well in Campeche, which would make the sea very angry. Manuel Felguérez: Against small-mindedness When I returned from Paris, we started a group which was like a rebellion against nationalism in the escuela mexicana. We wanted a different art, which was later called Ruptura. We didn’t want to break anything, but instead practice our own art with a different vision. We didn’t take ourselves that seriously, doing whatever we pleased inventing abstract art and new paths. At that time, Mexico City was a lot smaller, we all lived in the same area and there were cafés and places in which we met in an interdisciplinary way. This cohabitation was increased with frequent parties in peoples houses. Just like the plastic artists, we were ignored. Then we found another group which was also ignored, who was uncovered for the small-mindedness of the escuela mexicana, which was the group of foreigners who had arrived in Mexico at the time of the Spanish Civil War and the World War. They didn’t have a place within the new order, they had new ideas… and we made friends with the characters as they arrived. Amongst them was the group of surrealists. Kati lived close to Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo and were her friends. Her husband, José Horna, was like the artisan who created images of Leonora in different types of wood. Kati and I lived in Tabasco street, and therefore it was not uncommon that we would see each other often. She would sometimes have important jobs to do. For example, she did a lot of portraits of intellectuals and for her it was a great pleasure to make portraits of her friends. At the same time, a new magazine created by a group of writers was launched, which was called Esnob. For the fifties it was a sensational magazine, it had nude pictures of famous people of culture, of women. Everybody said that Kati was the specialist in undressing women, and always managed to get them naked… now it is so easy to get people undressed, but at the time it was a real challenge. But it is impossible to forget her long conversations. She always started off about when she was little, in Hungary, her beginnings as a photographer, Berlin at the time of the nazis, her entrance to the Spanish civil war as a photographer-reporter, and her arrival in Mexico trying to be a Spanish refugee.
Estanislao Ortiz: Teacher and companion I entered her workshop in San Carlos at the end of 1979 and stayed for 10 months, however I always stayed in contact with her, as her student although not officially. In 1985 I was offered a workshop but I thought I couldn’t compete with Kati. Then the option of working with her came up, she accepted and since then has always considered me as a companion teacher. As a teacher she was very disciplined and demanding. Not a military discipline but more in the form of a search for freedom. Kati started in the workshop after having studied in the Ibero and the Escuela de Artisanias. She was there for 26 years, until she could no longer go, in 1994. They made her a living room, but she didn’t like it, then she was offered the Casa Universitaria del Libro. The first day that she arrived, she asked for an ashtray, and was told that smoking was prohibited. She never went back. Therefore I started taking the students work to her house and from there, she would give instructions. Although she didn’t know some of them, she had great sensibility: by only looking at their work she knew who they were and if they had a vision. Once I mentioned that the majority of her students were not dedicated to photography. She replied: “Don’t feel frustrated, the important thing is to participate in the transformation of people, not to make photographers, but to teach them to see”. She wanted her workshop to be an oasis, that they would feel happy after having arrived tired from the street. That they would do something different from the monotony of life. The program of her course doesn’t have anything from the other world. The interesting thing is the way in which she applied the technical photography exercises, a development of sensitivity towards photography more than the development of a technique. At the end of the program, she insisted that the phrase “Without basic knowledge the liberty to express oneself cannot be reached”, be included. One of the exercises was to walk with the camera but without a film. What one sees without a frame is a different field from that which is visualized through a frame which specifies the limits of a space. It was to get the eye used to discovering elements or scenes in this limited field. Kati recommended a lot of reading. She didn’t only focus on photo references, and was always mentioning literary works, or talking about music, painting, and sculpture as means to enrich photography. There were certain phrases in which her experience was synthesized, such as “photographs must be alive”. She said that photos shouldn’t be discovered as a mere intellectual or visual act, but should be seen as an experience. She used to say that the students should forget about finding an image never seen before, as the brave thing is to make it reflect something of oneself. In 1979 we had a misunderstanding. We solved it with a pact and since then, as well as being my teacher and work partner, a great friendship emerged. She was a person with a great intensity of life and always willing to give you her time. For this she was also very disciplined, if she was waiting for a phone call from you at a specific time, she wouldn’t answer the phone unless it was the exact time. The same happened when she was expecting visitors, but once with her, she would dedicate you all her time… that’s why she never answered the phone when you were with her. It was the time that she had totally for you. And of course I miss her... how couldn’t I? I worked and shared 16 years with her...
José de Santiago: An integral woman I found out about her when I arrived at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas, through a friend who framed pictures for her and for the reunions that were organized in a Cuban café. The Kati that they talked to me about was an anarchist of huge congruence and with a very rich story. But it went no further. When I reached manager in the Postgraduate Studies Division in San Carlos in 1979, I met her personally. I coincided with her in the need to first build inside in order to flower, produce and search for the essential during this process, giving up external aspects such as notoriety, public appreciation or anything that would confuse deep, clean and pure feelings of personal realization. As a colleague, I had to initiate projects with the students, such as creating a photographic vision with regard to the escuela de artes plásticas located in La Merced. This gave place to other works such as the exhibition of the legend of San Carlos, the Depression Zone, cloths which appeared around the school, converting it into a multicolor show and the graphic documentation of the convent of Saint Inés. Amongst common friends, we used to criticize political hypocrisy, speeches and phrases during the long talks in Kati’s house. During these sprees, the joy was in interchanging ideas, emotions and anecdotes, in which Kati was a real source of experiences. Although physically and in age, Kati was the eldest of all the people, there was an energy in her so strong and unsuspected that she would end up tiring some. Kati was the eldest, but there was no generational barrier. I used to speak to her in a fraternal way, because to me she was a work colleague of my age, with a capacity for renovation that made her young. Through the years, I realized that she was a terribly intransigent person when it came to convictions. What she thought was sacred. She couldn’t stand hesitations or weaknesses. Kati confronted it in an almost brutal way for her own project. She didn’t worry about things and looked to kill. She asked you who you were, what you thought and what you believed. Before anything, Kati was an integral woman. A young person in the body of an elderly woman, intransigent, magical, intelligent, wise, and inexhaustible, a fighter.
Braulio: “You should have been a Wiseman” Then they sent me. They told me I was going to see the granny, and told me not to contradict her, and always say yes to whatever she said. Therefore I closed a hole she had in her wall in two days. That’s how we started to talk and I told her that I respected the elderly. “I like you as my friend”, she answered. The owner of the house arrived and told me off, saying that I had only done stupidities. But she defended me: “I’m the boss in this house and don’t come in saying such wretched things”. She started to follow me around telling me how to do my job, because the house was falling down. At one point I told her to leave me do my work alone or that I would leave. Tears came out of her eyes and it was then that she told me that she could trust me, and since then we never differed again, and she never contradicted my work. Then the work relationship turned into friendship. I came to see her when I could. Went I started to go, she would say: “Braulio, I miss you, and if I was 40 years younger, I would have fallen in love with you”. I never respected anyone, even my family, the way I respected her. And she would say: “Remember, I am not your friend, but you are my grandson”. I went to see her on the weekends and we would talk about her life, my life, and about childhood. She remembered that at one point she had to work as a servant in Paris, but asked me never to tell anyone. That in Paris people would hang the key of their house outside, and that people were different here. When she got married, she married without betrothal because the man she was going to marry never arrived, and so she married his friend. She married to receive money that she couldn’t inherit as she was too young. She always gave me advice: “Never say never, you have to look for the possibility and never let yourself be lowered by anyone. Never be humiliated”. I learnt a lot from her. I was very shy but she taught me to talk to people, and never be humiliated or let people treat me with disrespect.
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