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

HUNGARIAN FAUVES CASE STUDIES - GERGELY BARKI: Róbert Berény, the "Apprenti Fauve"

39. Róbert Berény: In the Park (Detail of a Park), 1909. Cat. No. 16. the landscapes he had painted in Paris and Tahitótfalu.

46 Then, in late 1909, he had one of his landscapes shown at the first exhibition of Nyolcak, entitled Uj képek (New Pictures), which was presumably identical with one of his works that came out of hiding a couple of years ago, entitled Detail of a Park (Fig. 39, Cat. No. 16)

47 Unlike the other works he produced at the time, the small depiction of a Buda garden painted in June 1909 was still strongly reminiscent of the Fauvist style, at least that is what the spontaneous brushwork and the brilliant use of colours seem to suggest. He had forty-nine of his oil paintings shown at the second exhibition of Nyolcak in 1911, soon after the group had officially been established. Of the forty-nine compositions, the nudes he painted during his Fauvist period in the course of 1906 and 1907 proved to be the most effective in discharging the noble task of "épater le bourgeois". In sharp contrast with the progressive press, which eulogized Berény's female nudes of distorted anatomy, the Philistine critics with their cultural blinkers received them with disgust and consternation. Aladár Bálint of the former wrote the following: "Nothing can demonstrate