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

7 Vilmos Perlrott Csaba (behind, holding a palette) at Nagybánya in 1904 Magyar Nemzeti Galeria, Archives Vilmos Perlrott Csaba: Verso of the painting Reclining Nude, 1905 Vilmos Perlrott Csaba: Clothes Drying, 1905. Bay Collection vision was less tied up with traditional schemes. They retained a fresh eye and an open mind in their approach to all those Avant-garde art phenomena, which remained inaccessible for their peers of a more conservative training. On the other hand, in their training they missed out on the practice sessions in multi-figural composition. In the same time the subject of classic nude study formed no part of their curriculum

—even though drawing after nude models was a regular fixture at the free schools. Those young painters, who were not content with plein-air painting and showed an interest in "academic-style" training, may easily have attracted some criticism at the artists' colony. They could receive such training only in Károly Ferenczy's class, who in his turn did not look on the gradual encroachment of certain modernist influences at the artists' colony with a friendly eye. He may have felt that the over-emphasis on the vocabulary of artistic expression took place at the expense of its power to capture totality, leading to some kind of a mannerism. In the various autobiographical writings Perlrott composed at different points in his career, he gave conflicting information about the dates of his first arrivals in both Paris and Nagybánya. Without denying the fundamentally unreliable nature of memory, we can notice certain tendentiousness in the inaccuracies. In connection with his first arrival in Paris, it is understandable that he kept pushing the alleged date further and further back in time, as he had numerous rivals competing for primacy in importing modernism to Hungary. In Nagybánya's case, however, the inaccuracies are almost impossible to interpret. In his first autobiographical letter dated from 1914,' Perlrott wrote that he had started to work in Nagybánya in 1905 under the guidance of Iványi-Grünwald. However, according to several sources,

6 including Perlrott's own admission later, he actually began to work at the artists' colony in the summer of 1903, when, on József Koszta's advice, he decided to enroll in Károly Ferenczy's class.

7 In a later interview he revealed that in the winter of 1903-1904 he also visited Ferenczy's private school in Budapest.

8 Ferenczy's influence is clearly evident in the first painting Perlrott completed at Nagybánya, which was entitled Gypsies in the Granary.

9 Even the second, somewhat more relaxed and sketchier version (Gypsies)

10 of the same topic retains signs of Ferenczy's influence, along with another composition entitled Clothes Drying,

11 which Perlrott painted in 1905. In later interviews and recollections, however, he tended to name Iványi as his master. "Károly Ferenczy [...] stood in a fair distance from us; being a man of exceptional talent, he explained the closed unity of nature differently; and I got close to him again only much later, when I grew to love the simple mode of expression he used in his art. "

12 Although it was through Ferenczy's support that he managed to obtain a grant,

13 which provided the financial basis of his trip to Paris, he apparently came into a conflict with his master in the summer of 1907, after his first year in Paris. "This was the year of my volte-face. Károly Ferenczy took exception to my conversion to the new direction in art," he said years later.

14 It is possible that Perlrott temporarily suppressed the memories of the years he had spent at Nagybánya as a result of the injuries he had to endure in those days. With the exception of the three compositions listed, all the works that Perlrott painted in Nagybánya before December 1906 have remained in hiding. Thanks to a newspaper article, we know that he painted the lifesize portrait of Adolf Agricola, Nagybánya's mayor;

15 furthermore, at an exhibition held in August 1906 and marking the chief county adminis-