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 - GYÖRGY SZÜCS:Dissonance or New Harmony? The Art of the Nagybánya "Neos"

Béla Czóbel: Portrait of Jenő Maticska, cca. 7904 Muzeul Judeiean Maramures, Baia Mare have complete confidence in them in the future," the authors concluded their letter, with the signatories including Mikola, Ziffer, Galimberti and Valéria Dénes, to mention only those who were by then considered as Neos.

27 It was under such conditions that the exhibition commemorating the 15

th anniversary of the artists' colony's foundation took place in August of next year. The organizers borrowed works not only from the artists and the private owners, but also from the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, thanks to Károly Ferenczy's intervening. In the introductory study of the detailed catalogue, which accompanied the exhibition, István Réti further refined an earlier version of his historical review published in Nagybánya és Vidéke in 1 909.

28 In the lengthy study, Réti was forced to take into account the existence of "Neo-modern" art, although he emphasized its complex character and strong dependence on theories. "Many people have been dazzled by the power of the printed word, which helped expand the most casual remarks dropped in debates in cafés and ateliers into grand theories, thus stitching up the most vulgar aesthetic theories and lending a scholarly complexion to them. The undisciplined minds

—and there are many such people among the artists

—can easily fall victims to this epidemic," Réti vented his feelings in the otherwise rather objective essay. He then pointed to Gauguin as the foremost foreign representative of the movement designated as the rebellion against nature and the "total anarchy of subjectivism". "The names of Van Gogh and Cézanne had been mentioned initially, but in fact their influence was felt only later; they were preceded by Mathis [sic!], whose students in Paris included many people from Nagybánya. His premeditated secondary art, which nevertheless required refined taste and culture, was fashionable mainly in speech: it hardly exerted any influence at all on painting."

29 Despite the critical tone, the Neos were also represented at the exhibition (with the exception of Boromisza, who increasingly isolated himself and organized an "alternative" exhibition in his own studio), but the overall picture revealed the dominance of the conditions then existing at the artists' colony: the plein-air Naturalism spiced up with some impressionistic elements, which emerged victoriously from previous year's infighting. The artists represented by the highest number of works were István Réti and Jenő Maticska (the latter had died at a tragically young age in 1906): the two collections together seemed to send out the message that the relationship between the art of the founders and of the next generation was organic and promising. Károly Ferenczy also sent a substantial collection of works. By contrast, Thorma seemed to have lost his confidence: he selected four large-size compositions from his old paintings. Naturally, the internal proportions of the exhibition did not follow a carefully planned concept, as those artists who either had worked at the artists' colony longer or who actually lived at Nagybánya, had more pictures available. This was probably the reason why Czóbel was represented by compositions he had made before 1906, which could not even be described as "pre-Fauvist". They included Girls Looking after their Flowers (1904), which showed Károly Ferenczy's influence, and the loving and dramatic portrait of his friend, Jenő Maticska (cca. 1904).

30 The Neo movement was best represented by the Matisse-students: Géza Bornemisza, Vilmos Perlrott Csaba {Portrait of Sándor Ziffer, 1908), Sándor Galimberti and Valéria Dénes, as well as Sándor Ziffer, whose collection was, indeed, very characteristic. The paintings contributed by András Mikola, who in Paris became friends with Leo Stein and made the acquaintance of Matisse and Picasso,

31 served to prove that the synthesis of the most recent French impulses and the artistic traditions of Nagybánya was possible within a single oeuvre—at that time still in a balanced manner. "By looking at the juxtaposition of the old and the new at this exhibition, and by studying the works that represent the experiments and the blind alleys, the successes and the failures, we can get an overview of the various trends, the infightings, the progresses and the weaknesses in modern art. We can also get a glimpse of the lessons learned from fifteen years of struggle and aspirations, and develop a vague idea about what it is that would actually survive from these experiments," the editor of Pester Lloyd, Miksa Ruttkay-Rothauser summed up the lessons of the exhibition.

32 Neo-lmpressionists, Neo-Moderns, Neos There is a consensus among Hungarian art historians to use the expression "Neo" in connection with both the period and the prominent artists mentioned above, not as a casual reference, but as a firmly established art historical category.

33 Standing on its own, the prefix requires no special explanation for either the specialists or the lay public in Hungary; but when it comes to the international recognition of this narrow regional (Hungarian) category, then it admittedly has only a limited validity.

34 According to the popular etymology, it was the abbreviation (one that had both a sarcastic overtone and a practical use) of "Neo-lmpressionism", which was applied, improp-