Passuth Krisztina – Szücs György – Gosztonyi Ferenc szerk.: Hungarian Fauves from Paris to Nagybánya 1904–1914 (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2006/1)
FROM PARIS TO NAGYBÁNYA - PARIS - GERGELY BARKI: From the Julian Academy to Matisse's Free School
3. A life-size nude sculpture Tibor Boromisza exe- 4. Béla Czóbel: cuted at Académie Colarossi. Archive photograph, Female Nude Standing, cca. 1907. 1906. Private collection Cat. No. 1 16. 2. Robert Berény, A nude study executed in 1905 at the Julian Academy, in Jean-Paul Laurens' studio Magyar Képzőművészeti Egyetem, Budapest models in itself was not a novelty for them. 3 Naturally, drawing nudes was not unknown to the artists living in Budapest, either, but the broad selection of the private schools in Paris, along with the excellent reputation of the modern masters correcting the students' works there, proved to be alluring. A few months before the above letter was written, one of the period's most progressive magazines, Modern Művészet (Modern Art), issued an all-round inquiry, in which the editors solicited the opinion of the more established artists about possible ways to improve the pitiful state of training in the area of nude studies, along with their views on the idea of establishing an art school specializing in nude studies in Hungary. 4 With the exception of Károly Ferenczy, who held a contrary view, all the other seven masters who responded —but most notably Rippl-Rónai—urged to follow the Parisian examples, and the example of the Julian Academy in specific. The head of the Nagybánya artists' colony mentioned the Julian as a negative example, pointing out that after having spent as much as eight or ten years there, students were able to draw nothing else but nudes posing inside the school. Ferenczy was dead against the idea of setting up schools specializing in nude studies, as indeed he was against the whole idea of a curriculum based exclusively on nude studies. As the plans for the establishment of any such institutes were not realized afterwards, the meagre conditions for nude studies in both drawing and painting continued to pose a serious problem at home, which representatives of the younger generation tried to circumvent by exploring the possibilities for improving their skills abroad, primarily in the free schools of Paris. Although the name Julian Academy routinely pops up in the biographies of our painters, the actual situation was not as simple. It was true that most of our painters enrolled in the Julian Academy upon their arrival in Paris, 5 but many of them, including Orbán and Berény, attended the otherwise rather expensive institute only for a couple of weeks or months at the most. 6 Just as at all other private schools, nude painting enjoyed top priority in the training of artists at the Julian; however, the school only provided basic training in this area, without actually exerting a profound influence on the artistic development of the students who studied there for years. We only know a small number of works produced at the Julian, but in addition to the surviving nude studies, the available documents also seem to suggest that the spirit of academism prevailed at the Academy. (Fig. 2) This is in apparent contradiction with those recollections, which described J.-P. Laurens, the teacher who corrected most of the Hungarian students' works, as a master who readily allowed his pupils to experiment with individual ideas. 7 Since our particular topic is Fauvism, it is essential that we give the readers a run-down on those private art schools that had a more liberal atmosphere and provided greater scope for the development of Fauvism, French and Hungarian alike. One of the most popular private schools, Colarossi Academy, was attended by only a handful of Hungarian Wilds, and very little is known about their exploits there. Vilmos Perlrott Csaba, for example, was one of the few Hungarian painters, who briefly attended Colarossi, among many other art schools. Since the characteristic elements of Colarossi's interior are easily recognizable in his oil painting School of Painters, we can claim with confidence that he made this particular painting there (dated 1907, fig. 6, Cat. No. 200) 8 . Tibor Boromisza visited Colarossi around 1905 or 1906, where, in addition to studying drawing, he also produced a number of sculptures of nude females and males made of plaster. According to the evidence of the inscriptions found on the back of the photographic records of the statuettes, his plastic studies were destroyed within a few weeks. 9 (Fig. 3) The lesser-known Humbert Studio ]0 was visited by the two most progressive artists of the Hungarian Wilds. Béla Czóbel's letter to Endre Bajomi-Lázár reveals that he and Berény were the two Hungarian artists
