Horváth János: Rippl-Rónai állandó kiállítás Kaposvár, 1978

also Moscow, Peterburg and Warsaw in this year. In 1902 he settled in Kaposvár. As a matter of fact from this time we can count the second period of his art. The characteristic and mood of his pictures painted here is the provincial life: „... at home the intimate life gave me the inspiration, I observed the customs, the life of the family, relatives and friends. Small-townish characters, types were interesting for me" - he wrote in his Memoiies. On his paintings the nice old man Uncle Piacsek with his big nose sitting in an armchair in the room of intimate mood among dolls got on important rofle. His pictures were changing also in their form, the contours began to lose their stressedd role, the colours came to master his paintings: Christmas, Uncle Piacsek with the Dolls, Sadness; When You Live from Your Remembrances, etc. Already in Munich he painted pastels. More of those were made at home: Skaters in Kapos, The Main Street in Kapos Being Paved. He made masterly use of the blooming freshness of the pa síel, but unfortunately the pastels slowly lose their blooming appearance owing to their peculiarity, and so these pieces of his works are exposed to destruction. In 1902 in the Merkur Palace in Budapest more than 300 of his works were introduced. In 1906 an exhibition was arranged in Kaposvár and another one in the Saloon Könyves Kálmán later on enlarging these pieces. At the latter one he scored a decisive success, almost oil of his paintings were sold. In 1908 he purchased the so called Villa Rome on the hill Rome nearby Kaposvár. In his work a new technique was used, he named it the period „maize", which reminds you of the pointilism, but here the colours are not limited to points but to wide ripples. His colours became more and more ardent: Father and Uncle Piacsek at Red Wine, Park with Nude Figures. In 1910 ha adopted Anelle, the daugter of his wife's late brother. From this time also Anella apperars on his paintings, for instance on the picture Lazarine and Anella. In 1914 on outbreak of the war he stayed in France where he was interned, and returned home through Switzerland from there. Later the ..maize'^styled pictures became more tired. In 1919 his last oil-painting Zorka in Biack Clothes was painted, based on his model Zorka Bányai His last period was connected with the Ernst Museum, Formerly (in 1912) he made a large glass-window for the museum. His most important works from this period are: Sigismund Móricz, Michael Babits, Ernest Osváth, Lawrence Szabó, Frederic Karinthy; but reflated to his former works these ar not so significant. In 1927 he began to fall HI, was treated in Balatonfüred, but in the autumm he returned home seriously ill. He diel on 25 th of November in the Villa Rome. * * * Now a memorial museum in the Villa Rome has been established by respect for the painter and memory of him in whose life the home of intimate mood played such a great role. Among these relics you cannot go in the rooms of the villa without being deeply moved. At the same time here the visitor guesses unitentionally the life and work of an artist of European rank and yet of Hungarian characteristic. The inspirers of his painting were the paternal home, the soil of County Somogy, the intimate small- townish life and the sparkling colours of the little flower-gardens. His artistic achievrnent is a brilliant chapter of our modern national painting. In the peroid of the art revolutions by means of his talent and style he first connected our country with the artistic-intellectual life glowing in Paris and inspiring also Ady. Joseph Rippl Rónai moved from Paris to county Somogy. In his Kaposvár home from time to time a certain room and then another one has served not only as his workroom but also as his model. As if the warm brown furnitures, the old china pieces of the dining-room, the sideboard with its drawers, the blue-white tile-stove were preserved here from the reform period, and they alii are to be found on his paintings. After Paris, after his so called „black period" the colour scale of his pictures changed here. The colourful, embroidered, trimmed textiles and the display of colours of the old kashmir shawls are to be found in his home having offered him the dazzling fullness of colours. His freshly beautiful pictures painted with an intimate art were born from these flowering colours and his daily environment. With help of his exceptional creative personality and his brush he could form the simpliest theme into a picture. You feel the works painted here to be born in the atmosphere of the „genius loci". The paintings of Joseph Rippl-Rónai are manifestations in colours of the deeply sensitive human soul, and these brilliant colourful pictures are not only the expressions of his closer environment and his home but those of his excellent art and human greatness. If is not the most proper conclusion of this brief appreciation the following beautiful metaphor of Julius László: ,,A sparkling rainbow was absorbed into the blue of the sky when he died."