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)

3. Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch: All Souls 'Day, 1910. HNG dents at the universities. It was probably as a cumulative result of these changes that Béla Fónagy lost his job at the Museum of Society in September 1921. Just like the short-lived Alkotás Gallery and Helikon Gallery, the Belvedere Salon was founded upon private initiative. These galleries sought to present the latest developments in contemporary art through one-man shows of living artists, major retrospectives of deceased artists and thematic exhibitions. Of the three galleries, the Belvedere Salon managed to hold on the longest, and the artists it had promoted got the most extensive press coverage. Choosing the former editorial offices of Lajos Kassák's avant-garde magazine, MA, the mezzanine at 11/b Váci utca, proved excellent.

35 Being an exhibition room for contemporary artists, it was regularly the first to present to the public the latest works by various artists. Apart from arranging the exhibitions, Béla Fónagy was probably the unnamed author of several articles in the short-lived art magazine Muharát (Friend of the Arts). Unfortunately, no document relating to the correspondence or other papers of the Belvedere Salon has turned up at all. The first exhibition was opened on April 17, 1921. It was the estate exhibition of the prematurely deceased sculptor Gyula Murányi (1881-1920), no catalogue was published, but several pieces from his oeuvre have found their way into the collection of the Hungarian National Gallery (HNG). He was mostly at home in the art of plaques: his depictions of Kálmán Mikszáth, Heinrich Heine and Ármin Vámbéry are remarkable. His Art-Nouveau statue entitled Cleopatra (111. 2), which had been exhibited as Snake Charmer at the Hungarian Studio in 1920, and his plaque of the world-famous photographer József Pécsi made in 1918 stand out from among his works the HNG holds.

36 In his will, Murányi left his tools and other belongings to the National Museum, that their proceeds be used to support the further training of young sculptors.

37 Regular exhibitions started as of October 16, 1921, with the estate exhibition of Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch (1863-1920), which was also a salutation to the founder and intellectual leader of the Gödöllő Artists' Colony. Now in the possession of the HNG, All Souls 'Day (All Souls 'Eve) by the ethnographer-artist documents the presence of a many-centuries-old folk custom. (111. 3) Spring Mood (1923) was acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts in 1923.

38 The following exhibition was made up of the work of Imre Szobotka (1890-1961) and Oszkár Varga. Interned in France during World War I, Szobotka presented mostly his latest and some of his earlier works. During his internment at Saint-Brieuc, he had illustrated Paul Claudel 's mystery play L'Annonce faite a Marie, some plates of which he now put on show at the Belvedere.

39 After his return home, his strict rules of pictorial structuring thawed. The expressive power and virtuosity oi Recumbent Nude painted in 1921 bears witness to how he had developed the cubist mode of expression further.

40 (111. 4) In the course of reconstructing the Belvedere exhibitions, further paintings have turned up from private collections: Doubled Self-Portrait (1920), At the Piano (Old Woman at the Piano, 1920), Evening in Buda (Night, 1921).

41 Oszkár Varga (1888-1955) belonged among those young sculptors seeking their own ways, e.g. Henrik Schönbauer, who were discharged from the Academy of Fine Arts on the proposal of Alajos Stróbl. It is only from reproductions we know his Flute Player and Water-Bearing Woman exhibited at the Belvedere. From 1926, he regularly participated at the exhibitions of the New Association of Artists (Képzőművészek Új Társasága, abbreviated: KUT). Lajos Zombory (1867-1933) was neither an avant-gardist nor a fledgling artist when he had his retrospective in the January of 1922 at the Belvedere. He had worked at the Szolnok artists' colony, but when in the wake of the war the Romanian invading army bombarded the city, not only were the colony studios, but so 4. Imre Szobotka: Recumbent Nude, 1921. HNG