Veszprémi Nóra - Jávor Anna - Advisory - Szücs György szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 2005-2007. 25/10 (MNG Budapest 2008)

STUDIES - Ágnes FELFÖLDI: Béla Fónagy and the Belvedere Salon (1921-24)

ÁGNES FELFÖLDI Béla Fónagy and the Belvedere Salon (1921-24) The few years following the First World War are a period in Hungarian art which has not received much scholarly attention. Defeat in the war, the disruption of the political institutions and the economy of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the consequences of the Trianon Peace Treaty radically changed the circumstances of life for the whole nation. Economic and political consolidation stabilized the country only by the middle of the 20s. In this short, transitory period, however, works of lasting value did come into being, just as they had done in the culturally more effervescent, previous decades; and the activities of the Belvedere Salon under the leadership of Béla Fónagy (1875-1935) between 1921 and 1924 are a case in point.

1 Arranging and bringing to a successful conclusion 30 exhibitions, the Belvedere proved to be one of the most important cultural centres of Budapest, even the country.

2 The successful running of the Belvedere Salon was based on the experience Béla Fónagy had acquired as a youth on study tours in Western and Southern Europe and as a curator and librarian in the Museum of Society, as well as his excellent press contacts. BÉLA FÓNAGY'S LIFE AND WORK Fónagy was born in Szabadka on January 1, 1875. Son to Ignác Friedman and Regina Reiner, he was named Béla Benjamin Friedman.

3 Szabadka, with a railway station and its almost 80,000 population, became the third largest town in the Monarchy by the mm of the century. From among the nationally known architectural masterpieces of the town, the City Hall and the Synagogue by Marcell Komor and Dezső Jakab respectively and the gymnasium built in 1899 by Ferenc J. Raichle deserve specific mention. By the time the adolescent Fónagy went to school there, the mathematics-physics teacher Árpád Kosztolányi, the father of the poet Dezső Kosztolányi, had already taught there, and was soon to become its headmaster. Descending from soap-makers, Béla's father actively supported local education. He set up a foundation to reward non-native Hungarian children from poor craftsmen's families who excelled in Hungarian language, history and literature. The most important academic competition at the school was in literature named after István Széchenyi. We know from an extant study by Gusztáv Tones

4 that Béla Friedman won first prize as an eighth grader.

5 Following his successful school-leaving exam, the talented and ambitious young Friedman enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Budapest in 1892, where he studied until 1896, absolving all his curricular duties. However, he succeeded with his state examination in neither April nor June 1896.

6 He thus enrolled in the Faculty of Arts at the university, studying there between 1897 and 1901, also spending an academic year at the University of Florence in 1897-98 and at the University of Rome in 189899. He thus had an excellent opportunity to directly study works of both Renaissance and Baroque art in their place of origin. He sought to foment his social integration by taking up a Hungarian name in 1900.

7 He spent his last years of study in Budapest in 1899-1901. His professor, the notoriously strict Gyula Pasteiner, did not accept his doctoral thesis on Botticelli. Later, Artúr Elek would write in his obituary of Béla Fónagy on the aftermaths: "With his sensitive personality, he sought solace in learning. He spent several years in Italy, mostly in Florence and Rome. He diligently studied Italian art, and increased his knowledge base. After Italy, he went to Germany, and lived for some time in Vienna from the little estate he inherited from his prematurely deceased parents."

8 Later, Fónagy would acquire a similarly profound knowledge of the art of Western European countries, which he would deploy as one of the prolific writers of entries for the Éber-Gombosi art encyclopaedia. He maintained regular relations with Károly Lyka, the editor of the art magazine Művészet, sending his reports on and critiques of the foreign exhibitions he had visited. In 1905, he published essays on Adolf Menzel and Constantin Meunier.

9 In the following year, Művészet brought out his study of Sándor Bihari, the founder of the Szolnok artists' colony, which was a commemoration of the lifework of the artist who had passed away not long before.

10 Following his long study tours of Western Europe, he settled down in Budapest, living at 48 Aradi utca in District VI between 1907 and 1910. A radical change occurred in Fónagy's life in 1910, for he became the librarian of the Museum of Society established in 1901. The institution for the scholarly study of social policies, public education and the provision of social services was first run under the auspices of the Ministry of Commerce until 1920, and then, following a major re-organization, under the Ministry of Public Health." The first director of the museum was economist Ákos Navratil. The first significant period in the life of the museum

12 was under ministerial commissioner Menyhért Szántó

13 between 1909 and 1919. It brought out its own periodical

14 and various publications on matters of social and health policy; it also organized public lectures at its own premises or those of factories and societies. The institution had a library of its own, and Béla Fónagy became its librarian in 1910. Stabilization in his social and