Passuth Krisztina – Szücs György – Gosztonyi Ferenc szerk.: Hungarian Fauves from Paris to Nagybánya 1904–1914 (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2006/1)
FROM PARIS TO NAGYBÁNYA - PÉTER MOLNOS: Budapest: The "Paris of the East" in the Hungarian Wilderness
Sándor Ziffer: View of Baross Gábor Square in Budapest, 1908 Cat. No. 275. Tibor Boromisza (?): Market, cca. 1908 Cat. No. 82a a critic writing hundreds of articles, he was the period's most influential "authority" on art matters. Despite his tremendous influence, posterity, but even more importantly, the representatives of Hungarian modernism, who are featured in this exhibition, primarily remembers him for a particular remark, which put Pál Szinyei Merse into an artistic limbo for a decade in the last quarter of the 19 th cenThe railway-station Keleti in the 1900s Picture postcard tury. Keleti, a man of academic tastes who as a painter was remarkably cautious with both colours and forms, was apparently shocked by the "delirium colorans", the colouring frenzy of Szinyei Merse, but that was precisely what drove members of the young generation of painters wild with excitement at the 1896 Millennium exhibition of Szinyei's masterpiece Picnic in May. In addition to justice being administered by fate, the process of slow fermentation was evident in the fact that —following a three-year term when Bertalan Székely held the post vacated after the death of Keleti—Szinyei took over as director of the Budapest art academy in 1905. It was Szinyei's greatest credit that he invited such teachers as Oszkár Glatz, Viktor Olgyai, István Réti and, above all, Károly Ferenczy, who was appointed in 1906. Truth be told, the backbone of the teaching staff was still made up by the old generation of painters with a decidedly academic outlook, from Ede Balló, a portrait painter of considerable technical skills but little invention, to Tivadar Zemplényi, a very cautious plein-air painter. Looking for new forms of expression, the youngest generation of 20th-century painters either never went near the halls of the academy or after a short stint they rapidly left for Paris. Although Róbert Berény gained admission to the institute, after an uneventful semester in Zemplényi's class he abandoned it for the Julian Academy. The fact that after a short period he also dropped out of that school suggests that the general experience of his disillusionment with Mintarajziskola had to do less with the standard of teaching there and more with the spiritual and physical mobility of the circle of artists in question. Dezső Czigány did not go: he was sent away, but —if we may put it this way —he climbed back through the window. He first started to study decorative painting at the College of Applied Arts and then, after being advised to quit his visiting student status at the Mintarajziskola, he went to the Munich academy. This was followed by Hollósy's free school, summer visits to Nagybánya, the Julian Academy in Paris in 1904 and then, in 1906, the Hungarian academy again, after passing an entry exam to study as a "special student". He could only enjoy the classes of his two masters, Károly Ferenczy and Viktor Tardos Krenner for a short time, because the artist, who by then had had numerous exhibitions, failed his exams again.
