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

gyössy, which was located in the vicinity of István Tower. It had been in business for at least a full decade, providing opportunity for the painters to hang their works on the walls and even to hold exhibitions announced in the local papers.

12 "Our artists feel the need to have the local public acquainted with their paintings, thus generating a broader interest for their work. At the moment, the venue that appears to be the most suitable for the purpose is Gyula Gyöngyössy's popular patisserie with modern furniture, where the number of paintings exhibited increases daily, with a growing number of sales, which is the ultimate purpose of every exhibitions" the newspaper Nagybányai Hírlap reported the event.

13 "The collection housed in a room of the Gyöngyössy patisserie, where there is a permanent exhibition featuring works by the Nagybánya painters, recently acquired new additions. A few paintings by Sándor Ziffer have been put on display. Every single work is a powerful testimony to those art movements, which he follows on his artistic principles," another newspaper report reveals.

14 It may have been unintentional, but the completion date for the town's urban development project coincided with the jubilee exhibition of Nagybánya painters in 1912. Beginning with 1909, electric streetlights were being introduced; and several dozens of customers were able to subscribe to the telephone service immediately after it had been installed in 1910.

15 In 1911 the old wooden bridge connecting the downtown area with the park was replaced with a new one made of reinforced concrete, which was better able to resist the floodwaters of the river Zazar.

16 Built in Art Nouveau style, the elegant Hotel István had been completed by October 1910 in the place where Hotel Nagyszálló had stood on the Main Square, before it was burnt down. Hotel István later gave home both to Lendvay Theatre and the legendary Patisserie Berger on its ground floor. Reaching the height of its popularity between the two World Wars, this patisserie also functioned as an exhibition venue.

17 According to the 1906 plans, a number of artist's studios were to be added in the attic,

18 but the idea was later dropped because of financial considerations. Nevertheless, Zoltán Bálint and Lajos Jámbor, two popular Budapest architects who had designed the Hungarian pavilions of the 1900 World's Fair of Paris, were also contracted to design new artist's studios to be built on the riverbank.

19 The urban landscape along the road to Felsőbánya was slightly changed by the addition of two new church buildings featuring Art Nouveau elements: the Greek Catholic Church was completed in 1909, while the Lutheran Church was finished in 1911-1912. Béla Iványi Grünwald executed the impressionistic altarpiece of the latter {Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, 1903) originally for the church that had stood there previously. The general public's interest in the historical past grew spectacularly after the Millennium Celebrations of 1896, as seen by the rising demand for the establishment of museums dedicated to preserve valuable items related to history, ethnography, natural science and art. The town embraced the initiative and the establishment of the Nagybánya Museum Society followed in 1900. With the help of the Ministry of Public Education, the Society set up a Fine Art Department within its framework in 1903. The exhibition actually opened only in the next year with a modest offering: six original oil paintings borrowed from state holdings (Nyilasy, Koszta, Glatz, Zombory, Eliza Nemes) and 29 coloured lithographs, mostly after the works of Renaissance and Baroque masters.

20 The founders' intention was to increase the size of the collection by forging a close relation with the artists' colony. The Béla Iványi Grünwald: Christ in the Garden of Getsemane, 1903 Altarpiece of the Lutheran Church in Nagybánya Society had an outstanding collection of posters: the viewers were able to study the modern methods of graphic design on the examples provided by hundreds of artists, Hungarian and foreign alike.

21 The curators probably drew inspiration from the typically aristocratic collection of Count Sándor Teleki, who was described by Mór Jókai as an "adventure genius". Arms and weapons, historical objects, paintings, valuable furniture, old works of applied art and ecclesiastical relics gave the backbone of Teleki's collection.

22 His collection of paintings included some exquisite works by Gentileschi, Bronzino, Guido Reni, Velázquez, Murillo, etc.

23 A personal friend of both Sándor Petőfi and Franz Liszt, Teleki fought in the 1848 War of Independence first, and then under Garibaldi; in emigration, he worked as Victor Hugo's assistant. From the early 1880s, he spent most of his time not in his manor house at Koltó, but in his newly built home at Nagybánya, where he readily recounted the fabulous adventures of his eventful life in the company of his favourite objects. The process of the museum's development was concluded with the formation of the Society of Art-lovers, which called upon Count Géza Teleki, a Member of Parliament and then President of the art society Művészház (House of Artists), to act as chairman. While the museums turned towards the murky past by collecting ancient relics, the artists' colony, which assumed responsibility for establishing modernist tendencies in Hungary, was busy transforming the future. During the relatively short span of twenty years from its foun-