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
Catalogue of Abel Faivre's caricature entitled "Au Salon d'Automne" Kees Van Dongen's caricature entitled "Salon d'Automne" the Salon d'Automne, 1906 Le Figaro, October, 1907 L'Indiscret, 1 November, 1905 the Hungarian Fauve, or Neo, movement had taken off at Nagybánya just a few months earlier, partly being sparked off by Czóbel's compositions. Obviously, the artists wanted to show their works executed according to the newfound modern concepts straight away, and in Paris, of all places, even if these hardly qualified as Fauve compositions by French standards. The Hungarian critic György Bölöni, who sympathized with the modern artists, wrote the following in 1907: "Last year it was Gauguin, who won everyone's admiration; now it is the turn of the other recently deceased great master of modern art, Cézanne. This year a large number of Hungarians came. The pilgrimage has been going on for some years now, but never before did they arrive in such numbers: seventeen to be precise. The jury reined back the boldest artists this year, and the salon became the melting pot of the various artistic directions. For this reason, every shade of Hungarian painting was represented here, from the young Béla Czóbel right down to Lajos Kunffy. The following young Hungarian artists exhibited works: Ödön Márffy with two panoramic compositions, Vilmos Perlrott, Ervin Körmendi-Frim, Ferenc Hatvány, Sándor Galimberti, Gyula Andorkó..." 7 On this occasion Róbert Berény's name was missing from the list, while new ones were added, for example, Vilmos Perlrott Csaba and Sándor Galimberti, who had become acquainted with modern art partly at Nagybánya and partly at Kaposvár, in Rippl-Rónai's company, and who would remain loyal to the Salon d'Automne in the future. In 1908, neither Berény nor Czobel was among the contributors; on the other hand, Czóbel's wife, the Moscowborn (?) Isolde Daig, did appear on the list of exhibiting artists. New names among the Hungarian contributors were István Csók (with three paintings) and Károly Kernstok, whose picture showed a nude boy; the other artists were Galimberti (with two paintings), Márffy (with three) and Vilmos Perlrott Csaba (with two). On analyzing the Hungarian entries as a whole, it becomes apparent that the stylistic trends they represented were just as diverse, or just as eclectic, as the ones characterizing the Salon as a whole. Although the former French Fauves continued to send works in both 1909 and 1910, their artistic interests developed in different directions and, therefore, they could no longer be described as Fauves. At the same time, some of the Hungarian artists —for example, Vilmos Perlrott Csaba, Valéria Dénes and Sándor Galimberti, as well as Galimberti's first wife, Mária Lanow 8 —continued to produce works, even as late as 1910, that could be regarded as a special version of Fauvism, although they, too, introduced some Cubist elements into the original stylistic movement. The same artists took part in the 1911 exhibition, along with Sándor Ziffer, who, as a novice, sent three landscapes and a still-life. In 1912, having just been elevated to the rank of "sociétaire", Perlrott Csaba contributed three compositions to the exhibition, where Hungary was represented by further two artists, István Csók and Valéria Dénes. Finally, at the last exhibition before the war in 1913, Perlrott Csaba was the only Hungarian contributor, once again listed among the sociétaires. To the extent that one can draw general conclusions from the limited amount of information available, it seems that initially those Hungarians took part in the exhibitions, who had already been living in Paris for some time and whose early artistic development roughly coincided with the emergence of the prominent Fauves —the appearance of Matisse and Derain. The Nagybánya artists who attended Matisse's academy from 1908 (e.g. Vilmos Perlrott Csaba), along with those painters who were in Matisse's orbit (e.g. Sándor Galimberti and Valéria Dénes), began to take part in the exhibitions of the Salon d'Automne only later. Finally, there were many artists, such as Géza Bornemisza—although he was Matisse's student —, Tibor Boromisza, Dezső Czigány, Lajos Tihanyi, József Nemes-Lampérth and others, who never took part in these exhibitions. Naturally, it would be rather inappropriate to discuss the exhibitions of Salon d'Automne separately from the activities of the other salons, as the rivals of the former also included the Salon des Indépendants, which meant that the artists had to either choose between the two, or establish relations with both. In any case, when seen exclusively from the viewpoint of contemporary French modernism, Salon d'Automne appears to have greater importance, especially in view of the fact that this was the institution, which came to promote Gauguin's art first and the Fauves' painting later, thus contributing —willingly or unwillingly — to the launch of a new movement. At the same time, from Hungary's
