IN 1956, as the Soviet Union was taking over Budapest, 20-year-old Anna Stein and her younger brother escaped over the Austrian border on foot. She left her homeland with a spare pair of shoes, some home-made biscuits from her mother, and two books - Hungarian poetry, and a volume of work by Dutch master painter, Rembrandt. She returned to Budapest for the first time 17 years later as an established artist, exhibiting at one of the city's main art galleries and included by the French establishment as one of their own. 'It is strange, I was one of the first of the artists to return to Hungary to exhibit and I have pieces in museums and galleries in Budapest,' said Stein, who has been back to the country of her birth many times since. 'But they always refer to me as a French artist, and not as a Hungarian one.' From next week, she will be exhibiting at Hong Kong's Gallery 7, as part of the French May celebrations. She admits that her life in Paris had been hard - for years she supported herself by selling jewellery - beautiful baroque earrings and watch straps that she now makes just for herself. But the years of struggle have now paid off for her, especially when she looks at her contemporaries from the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris. 'In Hungary artists were very protected,' she said. 'In the 1970s they were treated very well, and looked after by the government. 'But now the economy has collapsed, and they are having a lot of difficulty surviving as artists. 'There are very few opportunities to exhibit, and they are having to find other jobs, like teaching, to support themselves.' This is Stein's second exhibition at Gallery 7: the first was in 1992 when her work was part of the opening show at gallery. That time it was just her paintings: she has only recently turned to bronze sculpture as a medium. 'For years I could not afford it: it is very expensive to cast in bronze, and I was a struggling artist for a long time,' she said. 'Then I started earning money for my work, and I would sell one piece and put the money into the materials for the next few bronzes, and so on.' Sculpting has also affected the form of her paintings - of which three new works will be exhibited in Hong Kong. Stein describes much of the work that she has done over the past decade as 'lyrical abstract' - vague landscapes in sun-drenched colours. 'But since I have been making the sculptures, I have found their figures appearing in the paintings, where before they were much smaller, further in the shadows,' she said. Most of the bronze pieces have very recognisably human or humanoid form, although there are several trophy-shaped pieces made from glass and metal that are more abstract. Although Stein is Jewish, there are several figures in her paintings that are reminiscent of the classic shape of Christ, and plenty of angels and saints. Other figures are more classically pagan: they seem reminiscent of the legendary Greek gods and goddesses, or of satyrs in light-filled woodlands. 'There weren't many museums in Hungary when I was growing up; most of the really good art was in people's homes,' Stein said. 'So one of the few places to see art was in our many baroque churches, and I have always been influenced by that.' She said she recently saw a rabbi who admitted he had been 'shocked' at what he called her 'Christian art'. 'But I told him that, in a way, all European art is Catholic - not even Protestant, they only really had portraits - it doesn't matter what religion the artist is,' she said. Anna Stein Sculpture Exhibition, May 11-27, Gallery 7, 1 Glenealy, Central
