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)
10-11. Vilmos Fémes Beck: Man Kneeling and Woman Kneeling, originally parts of the decoration of the Schiffer villa in Budapest, 1912. HNG charge from the army and worked there till end of his life. The three-quarter length portrait of his first wife, Anna Hrabéczy (My Wife, 1923), whom he had married in 1914, and who frequently sat as a model for him, had been on display for the Budapest public. Unknown in Budapest at the time, the young man, following his example El Greco, was mostly interested in New Testament subject matter. The large-scale paintings he exhibited at the Belvedere treated themes from the life of Christ (Christ's Resurrection, 1922; Flight into Egypt, 1922; The Holy Family [The Adoration of the Child], 1923), and are now in the possession of the Debrecen Déri Museum. In the course of his career, he painted over a hundred self-portraits, three of which he exhibited at the Belvedere (one is now held by the Déri Museum, the whereabouts of the other two is unknown). The variegated material included also expressive nudes (Seated Nude, 1922; Nude Standing in Landscape, 1920; Female Nude en Plein Air, 1923) and landscapes (Autumn Days and Prisoner Quarters, 1923). The HNG acquired Mellon Picker which Holló had painted in 1924 and presented to the Budapest public at the Second Group Exhibition at the Belvedere. 74 Holló exhibited together with the now completely forgotten applied artist Viola Bató (1893-?), the sister of the artist József Bató - none of her works have been identified to date. Géza Blattner ( 1893-1967) is known today world-wide as primarily a puppet artist. However, he started his career as a painter, did some painting as a pastime throughout his life, and his attraction to it was rekindled again with full force in the sixties. After a successful Belvedere show, he left for Paris and began his new artistic activity, which would last several decades. Some of the graphics he had previously made are now in the possession of the Debrecen Déri Museum. The so-called 25 th Jubilee Exhibition presented to the art-loving public of Budapest the Netherlands and Berlin pictures of Béla Czóbel (1883-1976). The former Hungarian "Fauve" had been overtaken by the First World War in France, and, in order to evade internment, he escaped to Holland (Bergen), from where he moved on to Berlin in 1919, and lived there until 1925. He became a member of the Berlin Freie Sezession, and even put up a show there in 1922. It was the Belvedere Salon that arranged his first one-man show in Hungary in 1924. Having lived abroad for several years, the artist, now back at home, made resounding success with his exhibits. 75 He presented a selection of his work made in Bergen (The Bergen Minister, 1918) and the fresh paintings and graphic works made in Berlin (The Portrait of Mrs. Károly Kernstok, 1924). 76 (111. 12) In the spring of 1924, Tibor Boromisza (1880-1960), one of the so-called "neos", the rebels of the Nagybánya artists' colony, had his one-man exhibition at the Belvedere. Having served as a soldier in the First World War, he moved to Dunavecse in 1919, and then to Budapest, and settled down in Szentendre in 1921. His work in the early twenties bears witness to the influence of Buddhism and oriental prints; later he became interested in the life on the Hortobágy, drawing on the archaic, upright life of the people of the wilderness for his themes. A fine watercolour (Landscape with Trees) from this period is now owned by the HNG.
