Gosztonyi Ferenc - Király Erzsébet - Szücs György szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 2002-2004. 24/9 (MNG Budapest, 2005)
NEW ATTRIBUTIONS - Sándor Ziffer: Winter Village, 1910 (György Szűcs)
SÁNDOR ZIFFER: WINTER VILLAGE, 1910 BY GYÖRGY SZŰCS This unsigned landscape was one of the first acquisitions of the newly established Hungarian National Gallery in 1957, and was attributed to the prematurely deceased Jenő Maticska (1885-1906). Though there is no evidence available, presumably it was the dealer who sold the painting as a work by Maticska, and in the absence of any critical treatment of the painter's oeuvre, understandably no one questioned it. The style and the topographical characteristics of the painting certainly suggest a Nagybánya locality at first glance, and this seemed enough evidence to accept the authorship of the 'Nagybánya painter' Jenő Maticska. At the time no thorough monographic study of the second generation of Nagybánya painters, including Sándor Ziffer, had been made. The only work scholars had to rely on was the book A nagybányai művésztelep (The Nagybánya Artists' Colony) by one of its founders, István Réti, published posthumously in 1954. 1 Réti wrote affectionately of Maticska's art, saying 'it preserved the wonderful glamour of a brief life'. Maticska mostly painted plein-air landscapes, and only a handful of his attempts at figurai compositions and self-portraits are known. The first monograph on the artist was published only in 1985. The author, the art historian in Kolozsvár Sándor Ziffer: Winter Village II, 1910. Oil on canvas, 60x80 cm Unsigned Inv.: 57.116 T (Cluj-Napoca), Jenő Murádin, because of travel difficulties, had no opportunity to see the original painting, only a photo formally approved by the Hungarian National Gallery. His study of the photo led him to accept the work as a painting by Maticska, but he remained cautious in its treatment, for he deemed it strikingly modern and rather unparalleled in the oeuvre, and suggested the possible influence of Béla Czóbel, who had already exhibited his work at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1905. 2 A few years earlier, the pioneer of Hungarian research on Nagybánya, Ottó Mezei, had also identified the painting as one by Maticska in his seminal book published in 1983. 3 Now, with the deeper knowledge we have today of the art of Czóbel and the younger generation of Nagybánya painters, the so-called 'Neos', it is easy to see that the 1905 paintings of Czóbel do not bear the markedly fauvist characteristics his colours were to have from 1906. Since Maticska died on 9 February 1906, he could hardly have painted anything more 'modern' than Czóbel, the painter who introduced the movement in Nagybánya. The claim made above, however, is somewhat undermined by the fact that Maticska produced a number of paintings during his short career that could be thought of as counterparts to pictures by his artist colleagues. In 1904 Sándor Ziffer: Winter Village I, 1910. Oil on canvas, 72.5x100 cm Signed lower right: Ziffer Sándor 1910 Private collection
