Klemmné Németh Zsuzsa szerk.: Árkádiától Zebegényig. A zebegényi művészkolónia 1928–42 között (Pest Megyei Múzeumok Igazgatósága, 2003)

Zebegényben" by Mrs Jenő Elekfy, which contains greetings sent by her husband to István Szőnyi on St István's day (August 20th). In these light humorous verses, Jenő Elekfy describes the events of the summers between 1928 and 1942. Elekfy performed the verses with a guitar accompaniment at a special party every August 20th. Mrs Elekfy's explanations of the verses tell us who visited Zebegény in the period between the two world wars. She writes: "ten to fifteen artists worked every summer here in this little village and unwary passers-by quite often bumped into the artists' easels. The villagers got used to the artists and came to like them. There was a room free in almost every house. This is how Zebegény quietly became an artists' colony."

3 After repeated invitations, Mr and Mrs Elekfy finally came to Zebegény in 1928. Their friendship with Szőnyi started at the teacher training department of the Art College, which Szőnyi soon left to join Károly Ferenczy's class. "...We spent fourteen summers with István. They were happy and unforgettable summers,"

4 Mrs Elekfy wrote. Jenő Elekfy was a great watercolourist and it was probably due to his influence that Szőnyi started using watercolours. Szőnyi later discovered for himself the rather neglected gouache technique. Many brilliant little paintings, mostly inspired by the landscape, were created in the 1930s in Zebegény and the surrounding area. These paintings should not be seen as merely sketches for oil paintings but as works of art in their own right. After 1925, two members of the Szőnyi circle, Vilmos Aba-Novák and Károly Patkó, often went back to Felsőbánya and later founded a small artists' colony around Aba-Novák's house in Zugliget before spending two summers painting in Igal. Although they only visited Zebegény a few times, their relationship with Szőnyi remained close. All three changed their painting styles significantly after 1925, most strikingly in their choice of subject matter, with nudes replaced by everyday scenes and Arcadia's eternal idyll replaced scenes from nature and the simple events of country life. They became increasingly interested in the effect of light on colours, their brushwork became looser, their colours got brighter and their painting "showed a more expressive approach to post-impressionist landscape painting." 5 In 1928, they were among the first artists to win scholarships to the newlyopened Hungarian Academy in Rome but their neo-classical period ended during their stay in Italy. The fact that Károly Patkó and Aba-Nóvak started painting in the newly rediscovered tempera can be linked to their time in Rome. István Szőnyi also became fond of painting in egg tempera in the early 1930s and his characteristic Zebegény paintings are inseparable from this technique. Jenő Medveczky and Sztaniszláv Dombrovszky became such permanent members of the Zebegény artists' colony that they built houses in Malomvölgy (on the outskirts of Zebegény) and joined Szőnyi's group in the summer. Jenő Medveczky was one of the first to win a scholarship to the Hungarian Academy in Rome and his paintings are heavily influenced by the Italian Nove-cento movement and the joy of the Italian quatrocento. Through this distinctive filter, he captures Zebegény themes and the Danube Bend landscape. The pictures painted here display the solid space structure and the restrained colours that are typical of neoclassicism Aurél Bernáth started to seek inspiration from the Hungarian countryside after he came back from Berlin in the mid1920s. He visited Zebegény on several occasions, as shown in the significant canvas Zebegényi táj a Dunánál. In this period, art was moving towards the traditions of Nagybánya. "Although his desire for sensory perception came close to impressionism, he was separated from them by the structure of his paintings, their rational composition, and his dedication to the principle Berény Róbert Faluvége ' Elekfy Jenőné: Tizennégy nyár Zebegényben, (Zebegény 1970, 1990.) 12. 1 Ibid, 3. 1 András Zwickl: A: ideális és reális valóság képei között - A Szőnyi-kör Árkádia- festészete, ÁRKÁDIA TÁJAIN Szőnyi István és Köre 1918-1928, (MNG 2001), 33.