Passuth Krisztina – Szücs György – Gosztonyi Ferenc szerk.: Hungarian Fauves from Paris to Nagybánya 1904–1914 (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2006/1)

Fauvism is often regarded as the first significant 20

,h-century movement in the history of art in spite of the fact that the artists classed here did not particularly hold together, several of them even denying the sheer existence of such a movement. Around 1905, however, a group of young artists under the leadership of Henri Matisse set out to revolutionize European painting by the use of forceful colours, bold brushstrokes and a facile handling of line. Appearing at the Salon d'Automne of 1905, the artists that followed the new style, Henri Matisse, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck and associates, were dubbed "les fauves" (wild beasts), and their art was later to be called fauvism. There were several Hungarians who espoused the new style, mostly those who sojourned in Paris at length, especially Robert Berény and Béla Czóbel, or became actual pupils of Matisse, such as Vilmos Perlrott Csaba and Géza Bornemisza. From 1905, Hungarian artists regularly participated at the Paris Salons, visited the galleries and collections there, and studied at the popular art schools together with their French colleagues. These young men, who spent the winter months in front of easels at Paris academies, returned to the Nagybánya artists' colony, Nyergesújfalu or Budapest in the summer, and introduced a new painterly approach, which was soon to appear on the walls of Budapest galleries and even influenced several members of the older generation, including Béla Iványi Grünwald and István Csók. The Hungarian "fauves", though never establishing themselves as group under this name, in effect did make an intellectual community. The exhibition presents the work of those young artists who created a new culture of colour and form in Hungarian painting by following early 20

th-century trends, primarily fauvism. Seeking fresh colours and unusual harmonies, not only were they the first ones to step beyond the traditional naturalistic view of nature and art, they also opened the way to avant-garde tendencies.