Gosztonyi Ferenc - Király Erzsébet - Szücs György szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 2002-2004. 24/9 (MNG Budapest, 2005)

STUDIES - Éva Bajkay: The Classicizing Trends of the 1920s and their Beginnings in Pécs Tradition and Modernity in the Pécs Arts Society

Jenő Gábor

's Arcadian nude compositions [Orpheus Fig. 7) of the early 1920s suggest, with their powerful dynamics of light and shadow, an adherence to artistic tradition and passive escapism. Inspired partly by the musical homes of artists in Pécs, his Musicians and Dancers represent a desire for Eden, calm, in a manner best known from Kmetty's works or those Uitz or Perlrott made in 1916. In these pictures the figures are united in love, their motions receive a somewhat artificial, sometimes pathetic treatment. The representation of bliss without strife or work was at the time highly influenced, all over Europe, by Bloch's The Spirit of Utopia (1918). Molnár's and Gábor 's graphics spoke about an impersonal, pure, Apollonian ideal of being, quite unlike the Dionysian orgies that appeared in Gebauer's pictures. The time of radical value shifts had passed, and Gábor 's and Gebauer's nude compositions adopted an earlier, more general model, with an individual, meaningful mode of expression, though not without mannerism. In their landscape painting the Pécs artists felt less bound by models than in their nudes. Devoid of humans, their landscapes couple traditional, true-to-life expression with decorativeness, and later with expressionistic and cubistic tendencies. Andor Weininger, who came from a well-known family of musicians and was the youngest member of the group, started an arts career, after studies in Pécs and Budapest, in 1915 with decorative landscapes composed of tiny dots of colour.

39 The best landscapes of Hugó 8. Farkas Molnár: Humanity, 1922. Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest Johan, Farkas Molnár and Jenő Gábor interpret the hidden forces of nature. Discarding colour in an early cubist spirit, Gábor used chalk laid on its side, ink and pen to turn the hilly land or urban details into monumental phenomena. The tension that derives from primeval natural shapes received a peculiar cubist-expressionist treatment the likes of which appeared at the time in the art of those modernists who stayed in Transylvania. The charm of the town's surroundings, the magical beauty of the land gave rise to a general belief at the time that Pécs may become the new home of the Nagybánya Artists' Colony, which was now in a ceded part of the old country.

40 This, however, never took place, and modern landscape painting soon lost momentum in Pécs. The appearance in Pécs of idealistic, nostalgic-Arcadian, geologic, cosmologie or oriental architectonic solutions was not accompanied by attempts at social activism. Dobrovics, whose Nude Compositions were catalytic for these developments, chose in 1918 to pursue an aggressive political career for a time, though he went on to preside over, inspire, review and advertise the multinational Pécs Arts Society. From that point on he never exhibited in Pécs again, and sought to appear in the new Yugoslavia instead.

41 The art of Farkas Molnár, the most versatile artist of the Pécs Arts Society displayed a simultaneous influence of the various trends. When he returned to Pécs during his studies in Budapest and the communist terror reign of 1919, he was still yet to chose between a career as a painter and an architect.

42 Molnár, whom writer János Kodolányi described as a 'small, child-faced' man,

43 painted oils under the aegis of the modernism practiced by the artists he came to know in Budapest, Dobrovics and The Seven. The paintings Molnár presented at the March 1921 exhibition of the expressionists - which was the acme, as well as the coda of the activity of the Arts Society were clear expressions of the desire for order in an age of uncertainty, for perfection at a time when learning was in low repute. In terms of formal experiment, he went furthest in paintings with religious subjects (Pietà; Saint Sebastian, 1920-21), where the backgrounds are divided in a cubist-expressionist manner, and non-uniform light provides rhythm. Representations of martyrdom were quite popular after the war, and D'Annunzio's mystery had a great influence on artists from Debussy, the composer of the Russian ballet. Molnár too places the tied-up, monumental Apollonian male nude in the central axis of the picture, making him a direct opposite, as it were, of the suffering Christian soldier arrowed to death and later worshipped as a saint. From this Molnár moved on to create Humanity, a composition that is closed in agreement with the classic canon of form, and radiates a quasi-renaissance solemnity (Fig. 8). It was not by chance that the only contemporary Hungarian