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

Henri Matisse: Deux négresses, 1908-1952. Cat. No. 297. Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris © Photo CNAC

IMNAM Dist. RMNI © Philippe Migeat © Succession H. Matisse I HUNGART 2006 Forms

—without colours Once they had used up the visual motifs gathered at Collioure, Matisse, Derain and the others wanted to move on and to develop in a different direction. Since the idea of further dissolving the colours in strong light and making them even more transparent did not appeal to them, they turned their attention to tribal art. Matisse's interests in sculpting dated back to much earlier. As Isabelle Monod-Fontaine pointed out, between 1900 and 1910 he produced 69 sculptures and a steady dialogue emerged between his painting and sculpture.

107 With its oversized head and exaggerated proportions La vie (1906), one of his first sculptures conceived with :he new approach, made a reference to African art.

108 He created a bronze sculpture entitled Nu couché I. (Cat. No. 298) in 1907-1908. The crudely formed, thick set female figure is shown in the reclining position of Ariadne.

109 Matisse executed a monumental female nude, Nu bleu: souvenir de Biskra, an outstanding painting of that period roughly at about the same time. Presented in a full frontal view, the figure is shown in the same posture.

110 Matisse often included Nu couché in the composition of his paintings, which shows his attachment to the sculpture. Unlike Matisse's earlier work, this sculpture was not made after a live model. This is exactly why he was able to shape it more freely; he rebuilt in his imagination the human body according to the planes he invented and the envisioned system of proportions, just like the Africans did, whom Matisse admired.

111 Nu couché and Nu bleu are pictorial and plastic manifestations of the same concept on the same artistic level. Matisse was able to express the impetuosity of his feelings in the sculpture with the same intensity that emanated from his painting.

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2 Matisse incorporated his sculpture, Nu couché in his paintings on nine occasions,

113 each time recreating and reinterpreting it from a painterly perspective by transforming the three dimensions into two dimensions. André Derain: Composition: l'arbre bleu, 1906. Cat. No. 290. Musée d'Art moderne de Troyes, Troyes donation Pierre et Denise Lévy ©HUNGART

2006 The "African" theme came back with a vengeance in the sculpture Deux négresses (Cat. No. 297). The composition of the two women locked in an embrace was directly inspired neither by actual models nor by an existing African sculpture. Its origin can be traced to a totally different source. Similarly to many other artists in this period, Matisse often relied on the help of photography in his work. The inspiration for this particular sculpture came from a photograph published in a magazine and showing two African women precisely in the same posture.

114 Reaching beyond the inspirations drawn from tribal art and from this photograph, Matisse was able to create a fundamentally new concept. In Meyer Shapiro's view, "the sculpture represents an attempt to transcend three-dimensionality and to achieve a total representation of the figure which is seen simultaneously and fully from behind and from the front, a play between wrong side and right side, between mass and void, between opening and closure, an ambition which goes far beyond the exploitation of a pose."

115 The Hungarian Fauves stayed within the boundaries of painting, and as far as we know they did not venture into the territory of sculpture, of the third dimension. The only exception in this regard was Tibor Boromisza, who sculpted nude studies after live models in Paris, at the Colarossi Academy. Although he did not think they were worth saving, we have learned about their existence from surviving photographs."

6 On the other hand, we do know of several interiors and still-lifes by Hungarian painters, who included sculptures in their compositions

—although these were not the works of the artists concerned. For Hungarian Fauves, a painting is a painting and the artist's concept is realized only in two dimensions, either on paper or on canvas, but never in three dimensions; in other words, the artists do not try to challenge the boundaries of the genre. Is Hungarian art more cautious then the French? If the question is about colours, then the answer is 'yes', but if it is about ideas, then no. What is more, the Hungarian Fauves had a quality, which the French lacked: irony, self-reflection,