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 - GYÖRGY SZÜCS: Nagybánya, a Regional Centre

Tibor Boromisza: The Little Market in Nagybánya, 1910 Private collection Vilmos Huszár: Miners'House in Nagybánya, 1904 Miners' house Private collection in 1995 endowed with various privileges, it was immortalized by a few surviving architectural relics, such as the ruins of the István Tower, the gothic houses on the town's main square and a few picturesque wall sections of the ancient fortification. "The enormous gothic building of Nagybánya Church had played a great and notable part in Hungarian history, before it was burnt down and demolished at the end of the century; travellers stand back in awe and amazement, as they watch these imposing ruins, which demonstrate how ruthlessly the ravages of time can destroy everything!"

2 Students who studied in the free school from the early 1900s onwards had the unique experience of witnessing their own artistic development unfold parallel with the accelerating pace of the town's progress: the second revolution taking place at the artists' colony immediately before the outbreak of the First World War coincided with the urban growth of modern Nagybánya.

3 Naturally, the spread of the modern comforts of urban life not necessarily went hand in hand with the general and rapid transformation of artistic tastes. In the spring of 1909, at a time when the local paper Nagybánya és Vidéke (Nagybánya and Its Vicinity) continuously poured out reports on the various ongoing schemes of urban development, large construction work and the modernization process in general, the poet and teacher Dr. József Vietorisz of Nyíregyháza vented his outrage he felt on reading Holnap (Tomorrow), an anthology of modern poetry published in Nagyvárad, and specifically the poetry of Endre Ady. "We live in a new era; new ideas and new movements are launched in the intellectual world, in every branch of art and also in poetry," the author stated in an objective manner. At the same time, in criticizing the startling metaphoric imagery of the poems and the poets' resort to unusual adjectives, the author acted in defence of the traditional notion of beauty, which he amplified by quoting from Mihály Babits's poem, Fekete ország (Black Country). "So I think that it is not worth going to Paris for this...", Vietorisz drew the final conclusion.

4 Obviously, the change in life style was necessarily accompanied by the often-painful disappearance of outmoded things, customs, views, etc., leading to a clash between the conservative approach and the innovative attitudes, the division between which was not always manifested in a clear-cut form. Surprisingly, the person to speak out in defence of the natural scenery and the old houses and against the mindless extremes of urban modernization was the same Tibor Boromisza who put forward the most radical demands for the reformation of the painters' school, and whose entire life was associated with the movement of "seekers" among artists and art leaders. "We, too, have built a thing or two; but whoever among us can appreciate the fact that building also means destruction? Or does our concealed outrage prove quite powerless, when we see how a few monstrous buildings can blemish the urban landscape for three generations to come? When it actually blemishes the harmony that our ancestors bequeathed on us?"

5 We know that, similarly to the anthology, a number of the new buildings

—not only at Nagybánya, but also up and down in the country

— attracted the distinguished attention of the conservative critics; nevertheless, we cannot overlook the fact that the size of Nagybánya could be compared neither to the size of Budapest nor of other great cities in the country. The 1910 census put the population of Nagybánya at nearly 13,000, which was modest in comparison with the population of 60,000 claimed by both Nagyvárad, one of the most important literary centres of the country, and Kecskemét, the town that just then emerged as a rival of the Nagybánya artists' colony. Even the small town of Kaposvár, which was captured in Rippl-Rónai's paintings, could boast twice that figure.

6 One of the characteristic features of the development of modern cities, which constituted the regional economic and cultural centres, was the sudden population explosions, the marked "concentration of the population", which at the same time drew forth the agrarian movements opposed to the mass emigration to towns and the views calling for the repopulation of the rural areas.

7 A peculiar manifestation of this dynamics was tourism, which

—at least temporarily

—could alter the composition of an area's population; also, the construction of an environment to meet the expectations of the people arriving from the towns (transportation, hotels, cafés, etc.) could increase the dynamism of modernization on the one hand and could help spreading the attitudes associated with city life on the other. The owner of the brand new Hotel Korona at Nagybánya, for example, wanted to boost business on his premises by enlarging the building on Kispiac (Small Market) with a café "furnished in Budapest style".

8 The expansion of lodging facilities was badly needed, which was confirmed by a 1907 statistical survey revealing that 150 tourists had come to Nagybánya within a single month, and this figure took into account neither the people who visited their relatives nor those 70 painters who arrived at the artists' colony.

9 The tourists found accommodation in the hotels, while the artists wishing to stay for extended periods, people like Béla Czóbel, Vilmos Perlrott Csaba and Tibor Boromisza, looked for suitable boarding places in the town's considerably cheaper section across the river