Imre Györgyi szerk.: A modell, Női akt a 19. századi magyar művészetben (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2004/2)

Katalógus / Catalogue - X. Új humanizmus / New Humanism - Barki Gergely: Párizsi előzmények és a modern francia művészet hatása a Nyolcak aktfestészetében / The Influence of Parisian Studies and Modern French Art on the Nude Painting of the Eight

return to Nagybánya, Budapest or Nyergesújfalu, as the case may have been. However, even then it was Paris they considered as the scene of their studies. In a 1917 study, the famous critic György Bölöni wrote: 'The present generation of Hungarian painters was trained by the Julian, Grande Chaumière and Colarossi.' To this list of private schools we might add the Humbert Studio, where some of the Eight were taught. Researchers are most puzzled over Matisse's school, as it is still unclear which Hungarian students attended his academy. It cannot be claimed with any certainty that any of the Eight visited the Académie Matisse, which opened in January 1908, yet many of them are known to have developed a close personal relationship with the Fauvist master. Some recalled seeing Matisse at evening sketching sessions of the Grande Chaumière, where he would draw in the company of the young Hungarians. More serious encounters must also have taken place, and not only with Matisse but also with Picasso, Derain and a host of Paris-based avantgarde artists, at 27 Rue de Fleurus at Gertrude Stein's Saturday night soirees, where the Hungarians could actually see important works by these artists. Several of the Eight were regular guests at the American author and art collector's salons, and interestingly, in her autobiography Stein makes most mention of the visits of the Hungarians. Though she refers only to Czóbel by name, she also notes his female nude, a piece unfortunately lost, which was hung opposite Matisse's Blue Nude at the 1907 Salon des Indépendants, functioning as it were, as its 'wilder, Hungarian version'. Czóbel, named by Louis Vauxcelles le fauve inculte, spent neither that summer nor the following one in Nagybánya, where he had created a revolution the year before. Instead he went to Nyergesújfalu at Kernstok's invitation. While Czóbel was there, the paintings of both his host and Ödön Márffy, who was also there on holiday, became more modern, colourful, and 'Fauvist'. Increasingly, Nyergesújfalu became the place where the Paris experiences and lessons came to be distilled, and an important base for the naturalisation of the achievements of modern French painting in Hungary. Relatively few female nudes were painted in Nyergesújfalu, but quite a few boy nudes; the reason for this may be that Kernstok had a church next door, but an even more likely reason may be that the shyness of the villagers meant a shortage of models. During 1907-1908 Kernstok came to be the nucleus of what was to become the Eight, though at the time several of the Nagybánya neo-impressionists (e.g. Perlrott and Bornemisza) still considered him their master and leader. Why the latter two never joined the Eight is a question that requires further research. In the summer of 1909, at the Transsylvanián travelling exhibition organised by György Bölöni, the neo-impressionists were still exhibiting alongside the members of the future Eight. However, the cover of the catalogue for the show Új Képek [New Pictures] at the end of the same year listed only the Eight painters. The first exhibition of the still nameless group featured three male nudes, and only one female nude. The latter was Márffy's composition, displayed at the time as Fürdő nők [Bathing Women], and now held in the Janus Pannonius Múzeum in Pécs. The same audience that was offended by Márffy's Fauvist piece, took a liking to Dezső Czigány's Interieur, the other work to feature nudes. It reflected the joint influence of Félix Vallotton and Cézanne, but has since been destroyed. In the background of the painting there was a nude composition, whose technique it was difficult to make out; it may have been a large study for a mural, or a tapestry detail. When the exhibition in the Könyves Kálmán Szalon closed, most of the works were shown during the following months in Berlin, though the wary organisers did not select the most controversial nude compositions, those paintings by Márffy and Tihanyi that had provoked violent reactions in Budapest. It is likely that at the 1911 exhibition of the now officially formed group Tihanyi adopted a similar, cautious approach when he presented none of his nudes, although he created quite a few that year. It was Róbert Berény who became the new target of conservatives; the Fauvist nudes he had created in Paris, and the more recent nude compositions which he prepared in Budapest and which can be read as paraphrases of Cézanne, were ridiculed for a long time. Czigány, Márffy and Dezső Orbán were similarly criticised for their female nudes. While these artists remained true to the avantgarde spirit of Paris, the monumental nude compositions presented by Kernstok and Pór in 1911 indicate that their creators were moving further and further away from the French ethos. Their more recent works revealed their immersion in the great creators of the Italian Renaissance, while at the same time not renouncing the curvatures of Art Nouveau. A year after their first group exhibition at the Nemzeti Szalon [National Salon], six of the Eight appeared in Cologne at the international 'Sonderbund' exhibition. There too they presented nudes, some of which have not yet been identified. Notable besides two nude studies by Berény was Lajos Tihanyi's plaster sculpture Női félalak [Woman's Torso]. In 1912 at the third show of the Eight held once more in the National Salon, Orbán alone carried on the French line. The large-