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 - JUDIT BOROS: The Synthesizer. Vilmos Perlrott Csaba's Painting

JUDIT BOROS The Synthesizer. Vilmos Perlrott Csaba's Painting In a frequently reproduced photograph' that shows Henri Matisse among his students, we can spot Vilmos Perlrott Csaba (February 2, 1880 - January 23, 1955) representing the Hungarian students of the Matisse academy all by himself.

2 Perlrott, who arrived in Paris at the end of 1906,

3 was a member of the Matisse academy from the moment the school was opened on the initiative of Sarah Stein and Hans Purrmann in 1908. In his own account, Perlrott was among Matisse's favourite students and as such, he often had the privilege of getting an invitation to see the master's works in Matisse's separate studio, receiving first-hand explanations about the compositions.

4 He knew Derain and Braque personally and was a familiar visitor in Picasso's studio. It is fair to say that the artistic revolution of the European Avant-garde movements unfolded right in front of his eyes. Like most of the Neos at the artists' colony, Perlrott spent the winter in Paris and the summer in Nagybánya, establishing a direct link between this provincial small town in Hungary and the period's most important art centre. In Paris, the Neos exhibited the works they had painted in Nagybánya, and vice versa: they presented to the founding fathers of the Nagybánya artists' colony the canvases they had executed in Paris. In culmination of a process that they had initiated, the Neos created a distinctly Hungarian (or Central-European) branch in modern art. While they preserved the Impressionistic or Post-Impressionistic approach from the period before the emergence of modern art, they freely chose and picked from the vocabularies of the new stylistic movements and used them within the framework of a basically representative style, occasionally even in a manner that was contrary to the originally intended function. It was hardly a coincidence that Matisse's Fauvism had the least influence on some of the students at the Matisse academy. They were far more influenced by Matisse's earlier period, by the proto-Fauve compositions he had produced in the interval from 1900 through 1903, as well as by his later works, which revealed Cezanne's influence in terms of compositional structure, while keeping the colours of his Fauvist period, outlined with dynamic contours. Vilmos Perlrott Csaba (to the left in profile) at Matisse's academy 1909 Detail of an archive photograph 1903-1906: Nagybánya Perlrott arrived in Paris after several years of intensive study at Nagybánya. He already belonged to that generation of young painters, who eschewed academic training and could directly plunge into their careers under the guidance of the Nagybánya masters. As a result, the young Nagybánya artists were able to work in a frame of mind that was more independent of the European art traditions; in comparison with the first-year students of the Budapest academy, their artistic