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)
he attempted a somewhat reduced, smaller version of Czóbel's A Girl under a Flowery Window (Czóbel Museum, Szentendre). At that time, Czóbel himself was still on his quest for an individual mode of expression. At the end of the same year, Maticska's master, Béla Iványi Grünwald, took the consumptive young artist to Rome, where he met Tibor Boromisza, the future leader of the Nagybánya 'Neos'. Here Maticska painted the arched buildings in the park of Villa Borghese, just as Boromisza had done {Detail of a Park in Rome, 1904, Kecskemét Gallery), and the similar lighting and point of view suggest the works were executed at the same time. Because these two paintings of a Roman park bear such a strong stylistic resemblance, it seems reasonable to suppose that Maticska could have similarly paraphrased another painting, this time a Ziffer, in his work Winter Village. However, no work of this kind is imaginable in Ziffer 's oeuvre from before 1906. Even more conclusive proof, though, in the matter of attribution was afforded by a signed and dated painting of Ziffer's which turned up at the Nagybánya exhibition of the MissionArt Gallery in Miskolc. This work illuminated the problematic nature of the painting in question, and, in fact, excluded the possibility of Maticska's authorship. 4 Also bearing the title Winter Village, this painting, which is owned privately and of a somewhat larger proportion, is dated 1910. Its composition shows another section of the same street in the miners' village, and its use of colour, its brisk and bold brush strokes match the dryer, tempera-influenced style that was characteristic of the artist at this time. Prompted by Czóbel, Ziffer went to Paris in 1906, where he was electrified by the work of the young artists around Matisse, and by the end of the year, even sent a picture to the Salon des Indépendants for exhibition. Developing these initial French impressions further, in a few years' time, Ziffer became one of the best, though often criticized, representatives of modern Nagybánya painting. 5 The work, which has no parallel in Maticska's oeuvre, fits perfectly into the art of Ziffer. However, as Ziffer generally signed his works, the question arises whether it is a piece of skilful forgery or not. The professional mode of its painting, the clearly identifiable individual marks of hand, which can be compared to those of other works, exclude this possibility; furthermore, it is highly unlikely that a painting made for the purposes of forgery would be left unsigned and sold with an attribution to Maticska, a name fetching a much lower price. It should be noted that at the time of the purchase, in 1957, there was no art market in socialist Hungary. During thorough examination of the painting, it was also found that three sides of the canvas were trimmed, possibly cutting the strip bearing the signature. If the artist himself had 'narrowed' his section of view, it is possible, given the other three-figure paintings, that he was planning to make additions to the essentially finished picture. Thus, however painful it may be to remove an important piece from the fragmentary Maticska oeuvre, the painting entitled Winter Village has to be recognized, based on scholarly research, as an authentic work by Sándor Ziffer painted in 1910. NOTES 1 See György Szűcs: The Hungarian Barbizon. István Réti and the Nagybánya Painters, The Hungarian Quarterly, Vol. 42. Winter 2001, pp. 68-76. 2 Jenő Murádin: Maticska Jenő. Kriterion, Bucharest, 1985, pp. 46-47, cat. 79, colour reproduction: no. 16. 3 Ottó Mezei: Nagybánya. A hazai szabadiskolák múltjából [Nagybánya: the Past of Hungarian Free Schools), Múzsák, Budapest, n.d. [1983]. 4 László Jurecskó and Zsolt Kishonthy (eds.): Nagybánya. Nagybányai festészet a neósok fellépésétől 1944-ig {Nagybánya: Nagybánya Painting from the Appearance of the Neos until 1944), MissionArt Galéria, Miskolc. 1992, cat. 152. Repr.: 203. Judit Boros provides a summary of Sándor Ziffer's career in the catalogue, pp. 129-138. 5 István Borghida: Ziffer Sándor, Kriterion, Bucharest, 1980.
