Marie Revai

For the information on Marie Revai I spoke with Ivon Lamy, a student of Marie. His close relationship with Marie, his mentor, led him to writing a book on her which he plans to translate into English. This is what he told me:

After the communists invaded Hungary and after much hardship and loss, she and her sister managed to reach Paris. Her sister was a doctor and through her they were helped to come to Canada by a University Women’s Club. In 1951 Marie and her sister arrived in Montreal. Both sisters started out in Montreal working in factories.

Marie was an artist and had a teaching diploma from Budapest. Eventually she began working in Montreal teaching art. She soon found herself teaching art to children at a girls’ summer camp, as well with Arthur Lissmer at the art museum in Montreal. This led to her being hired in the Occupational Therapy Department to teach art to psychiatric patients at the Alan Memorial Institute in Montreal. Although she worked in the OT department, she independently became very interested in the psychology of the art work being produced.

By 1957 Marie had her own art room in the hospital, an art room which was filled with flowers, plants, birds, and animals. Working very closely with psychiatrists she became interested in the symbols expressed in the art if people in psychosis, the quality of the art of people when ill, and the changes that occurred when they would become well. Much of her work was in detection of psychosis and confirmation of diagnosis. She also developed an awareness of impending mental change that would first reflect itself in the art before manifestation in action. Her art room became a resource for examining the effects of drugs on the patients and their mental perception. She collected art that reflected fragmentation, depression, and lack of relation to reality and more.

This all led to more recognition in the community and she would regularly be invited to work with many groups of people with special needs. By now her interest in psychology and art was full blown and she began to lecture on psychiatric art versus modern art. In 1967 she was invited to lecture in Paris for the International Association for Psychopathology in Expression, a group that still exists today.

With all her drive and curiosity she and Elinor Ullman, one of the pioneers of art therapy in the United States, found each other. This relationship led to Marie being included as one of the founders of the American Art Therapy Association. The inaugural meeting was held in Washington in 1971. By 1972 she was recognized as a Registered Art Therapist by the American Art Therapy Association.

A defining moment in her pioneering work was the organization of an exhibition at the hospital comparing the art of the psychiatric patients to modern art. The exhibition illustrated that the modern artist was able to enter the psychotic state but contain it while in the art of the psychiatric patients there was no such control. This exhibition captured the imagination of Leah Sherman, who was the Director of Fine Arts of Concordia University at the time. In her own pioneering spirit she promoted art therapy in her department. This resulted in the initiation of an art therapy program at Concordia University in 1980 in the art education department a program in which Marie was involved for many years. Marie died in 1997.