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"
Sándor Ziffer: Woman in Armchair, 1908. Cat. No. 281 On the basis of the above, it is safe to say that we can interpret the various isms (categories) within their own period from the angle of either the style or the technique or the artistic attitude —just as our predecessors could. It would not serve the better understanding of these phenomena, if we reproved our predecessors for their failure to apply the currently used interconnections; if we did that, we would question the contemporary authors' function to introduce new concepts and to define periods. The mixing of viewpoints had the consequence that art history came to attribute the spread of the undoubtedly complex notion of "Neo-lmpressionism" either to sheer ignorance or to willful misinterpretation without making an attempt to unveil the real causes behind the origin of the concept. On the other hand, if we pose to consider the fact that the Hungarian artists and art writers were able to see the later works of the Neo-lmpressionists as we understand the term today (i.e. the Pointillists: Signac, Cross, Luce) side by side with the early, slightly rawer but essentially related, works of the Fauves, who were just in the process of formation, all using elementary brushstrokes, then we shall be able to see that contemporary art writers tried to introduce the category on the basis of the existing similarities, rather than dissimilarities. In Hungary, however, we cannot find an analogous continuity: a continuous line spanning from the art of the Nabis, or Sérusier's epochal Talisman (1888) if you like, right to Fauvism, with a closely related system of relations regarding artistic influences in the background, cannot be drawn. And if we considered the Hungarian art periods from the establishment of the Hollósyschool in Munich (1886) to the appearance of the second generation
