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 - KRISZTINA PASSUTH: Hungarian Artists at the Salons of Paris

then vice president of Salon d'Automne, played a substantial part in the arrangement of the works. It was largely thanks to him that the various compositions hung on the walls created the impression of the presence of a distinct group.

4 In Room VII there were 5 paintings by Camoin, 9 by Derain, 5 by Manguin, 5 by Marquet, 10 by Matisse, and 5 by Vlaminck. Therefore, this was the most important and most effective room, which later was referred to as "cage aux fauves" or "Fauve cage". Room III featured four paintings by Puy, which were placed next to the compositions of the two Nabis painters, Bonnard and Vuillard. In Room XVI the viewers could see 3 paintings by Rouault, and in XV, next to the works of Kandinsky, Jawlensky and Othon Friesz, there were also 6 canvases by Valtat. And finally, and most importantly from our perspective, it was in this room that Béla Czóbel exhibited three compositions, Young Girl with Blue Cups, Market Corner and Autumn Day. The arrangement indicates that, while Czóbel's compositions failed to make it to the all-important Room VII, the central location for the Fauve painters, he had no need to complain about the company of Kandinsky, Jawlensky and Valtat. Whether it was by chance or whether it was deliberate, as a foreigner, he was bracketed with the Russians. In any case, it was a stupendous achievement that a 22-year-old young man was able to appear in the company of the most modern and most important masters at an exhibition, which was not even attended by all the French Fauves, as Dufy's absence can demonstrate. We have Czóbel's personal account of the 1905 Salon d'Automne. " I hear original, new voices, which have scared the spectators into a stampede, as they have no yardsticks to rely on, and no reminiscences to draw from, in their comparisons with previous paintings."

5 The art critic Élie Faure wrote a warm Foreword to the exhibition catalogue. Among Two pages taken from the 4 November, 1905 issue of L'illustration other things, he urged the readers "to listen to these primitives." Here the word "primitive" already has a positive connotation, although also included in the category was Henri Rousseau, who had two of his landscapes shown in the same section, along with his captivating and highly evocative composition Le lion, ayant faim, se jette sur l'antilope, which also quite rightly deserved the description "primitive" or "sauvage". From this time onwards, i.e. beginning with 1905, the number of Hungarians exhibiting works of modern conception at the Salon d'Automne grew parallel with the general rise in the number of participants. Naturally, only those works were exhibited, which the jury had accepted, which meant that this fact alone was a sign of recognition

— at least in the case of the young beginners. In 1906, the 19-year-old Robert Berény stood out, both as far as youth and talent were concerned. He had four paintings shown at the exhibition: three portraits and a picture of a child playing.

6 To some extent, it may seem paradoxical that the young artist should have his first major exhibition in Paris, rather than in Hungary. The same exhibition featured some of the outstanding compositions of Hungarian Fauvism by Béla Czóbel: Two Painters/Painters Outdoors (Cat. No. 108), Man Seated (Cat. No. 105), Portrait (Cat. No. 106), as well as two landscapes: View of Nagybánya and Apple Trees. As for further Hungarian participants, we have Vilmos Huszár, the future founding member of the Dutch group De Stijl, as well as Ödön Márffy, who was represented by several interiors. Therefore, in 1906, just one year after the introductory exhibition of the Fauves, the Hungarian artists had their paintings shown in Paris, together with the works of the French Fauves in the Salon d'Automne, without at all appearing to be epigones. To give the readers some idea about the immediate historical preliminaries, we must mention that with the reproductions of the works exhibited at the Salon d'Automne of 1905