Passuth Krisztina – Szücs György – Gosztonyi Ferenc szerk.: Hungarian Fauves from Paris to Nagybánya 1904–1914 (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2006/1)
AT HOME AND ABROAD - KRISZTINA PASSUTH: Wild Beasts of Hungary Meet Fauves in France
André Derain: La Seine au Pecq, 1904 Musée d'Orsay, Paris, © Photo RMNI © Hervé Lewandowski © HUNG ART 2006 and horizontal brush strokes form the texture of the composition. The contours of the trees are green and the same shades of greens appear on the other side of the bay, along the pale hillsides. The composition is based on the rivalry between red and green. The painting makes a powerful impact by virtue of the simple and modest means it employs; in a way, it anticipates such abstract styles as Orfism, for example. The Hungarians remove themselves from the reality of nature, from the surrounding friendly landscape, from bridges and church gardens, from the red earth on the banks of the river Zazar in Nagybánya, or the scenery of the Danube at Nyergesújfalu to a much lesser degree. If we consider the landscapes of such painters as Géza Bornemisza, Vilmos Perlrott Csaba, Lajos Tihanyi and Sándor Ziffer, for example, then their identification with the Nagybánya traditions will still be noticeable in the majority of their compositions. Even the most daring among them, the likes of Vilmos Perlrott Csaba or Sándor Ziffer, for example, remain within the characteristic range of a more traditional approach and vision and do not wish to replace it with something fundamentally different in their landscapes. Hungarian painters rarely use extreme colour contrasts; in general, they do not reduce the composition to such a contrast as between green and red, and their brush strokes do not become unbound from the object they depict, neither do they become autonomous. Since the Hungarian Fauves were primarily interested in depicting the visible world, composition was as important for them as recording an impression. Unlike their French colleagues, they did not want to create the illusion of spontaneity. The black or blue contours encircling the motifs played a much more important role in their compositions than they did in the paintings produced in Paris or Collioure. Compared to their French counterparts, the Hungarian Fauves were much closer to Gauguin and, in some cases, even to Cezanne's compositional principles. As they do not quite let themselves go, they cannot feel the exhilarating joy of being liberated from the scenery, a sensation that gives the Collioure pictures their curious force. Of the Hungarian artists, Valéria Dénes seemed to have the greatest capacity to free herself from the limits of perceived reality, especially in her still-lifes and only after 1908. The fluidity of the brush strokes in her paintings speak for themselves. In the case of the Hungarian paintings, the studios or the landscapes generally remained closed units. The depth of field was often achieved by a typically pink, winding road or path leading deep into the pastel green environment. This particular pink appeared in several Hungarian paintings almost simultaneously. Hungarian painters rarely painted townscapes; their landscapes usually featured Nagybánya. The canvases painted by the Hungarian Fauves usually paled in comparison with the violent, harsh colours of Derain or Vlaminck's works. The Hungarian compositions resembled more the French paintings produced before Collioure, such as André Derain's landscapes from 1904, entitled Le viel arbre (Cat. No. 288) and La Seine au Pecq. 89 In the case of the latter painting, the landscape still not levelled out into an even plane, as it would subsequently be the case in paintings made in 1905-1906. Nature is closer, just like in the Nagybánya landscapes. Derain presents a low-angle view of the street. The composition is diagonally divided into two parts; on the left hand side there is a tiny figure near the avenue, just like in later compositions by András Mikola, Béla Czóbel, Lajos Tihanyi and others. Perhaps Béla Czóbel's painting, Street in Paris (Cat. No. 104) from 1905 provides the closest analogy, as it also shows the street from a low angle with a street in the background. Even after 1905, the Hungarians rarely used colours, which looked as if they had been applied to the canvas straight from the tube. (A few years later József Rippl-Rónai would use this technique to achieve this in his so called "maize" style.) Subtle whites, pinks and greens substitute the red surfaces in the Hungarian paintings. The brush strokes stay inside the contours of the forms; they remain confined. The Hungarian Fauve colours are generally surrounded by light contours; the figures do not completely loose their plasticity and do not become one with the landscape. The Hungarian landscapes only rarely exhibited the same homogenous substance, which was so typical of the early French Fauves. One example is Sándor Galimberti's St.Raphaël (Cat. No. 132) made in 1912 or thereabouts. Here the homogeneous substance is especially noticeable, since it is enhanced by Galimberti's "aviatic approach" 90 ; in other words, his high-angle viewpoint. The great burning red planes of the flat and the low, tightly built houses, contoured with green and speckled with the dark greens of the windows and foliage radiate a genuine Mediterranean atmosphere. This painting was born at the time when not only the French, but also Hungarian Fauvism was past its prime, yet early French Fauvism's bold brush strokes are unmistakably echoed in it. Béla Czóbel's Man with a Straw Hat (Cat. No. 112) is probably one of the "wildest" Hungarian Fauve pictures. The colours, which are either smudged on the canvas, or applied in zigzags, seem to live an independent life but are still kept under control by the strong black contours. Amidst all this torrent of colour the figure retains its individualtiy. The landscape stretched behind the man in the straw hat frames the portrait in yet another colour. The model and its setting together form one closed plane, yet even this substance is less homogeneous than what Matisse achieved on his compositions from that period. With a little exaggeration, we might claim that even this, the wildest of the Hungarian Fauve paintings, keeps some distance as compared to the explosion of colours on the French canvases.
