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

perspective, the Salon des Indépendants also played a rather important role, since numerous Hungarian artists exhibited their works here, especially after 1907. 2. Salon des Indépendants The Salon des Indépendants was established in 1884, approximately two decades before the birth of the Fauvist movement, with the purpose of clearing the way for the artistic development of beginners, foreigners and artists regarded as dilettantes, by offering them opportunities for exhibiting their works. In other words, it openly turned against the policies of the official salons, such as Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, which barred foreigners from voting as sociétaires and allowed only a limited number of foreigners to exhibit their works. The main attraction of the Salon des Indépendants was the fact that there was no jury to reject or to filter the works that had been sent in. Basically patterned on the 1863 Salon des Refusés, the institute came into existence in response to a petition submitted to the municipality of Paris by some painters and sculptors. In the early days it received temporary shelter inside the building Pavillon de la Ville aux Champs Elysées, which had originally been erected for the 1878 World's Fair. The public learned about the Salon's first exhibition in 1884 from a poster put up on the walls of Paris, as described in Paul Signac's letter.

9 A maximum of four compositions could be submitted by one artist in every section. At the first show, which opened in December, a total of 136 artists submitted around 280 compositions, which was on the small side in comparison to the other salons. At the 1886 Salon this figure came down to 94 participants: to artists who were prepared to face the consequences, the prospect of not being able to receive government commissions and not being able to publish their works in the contemporary press. Henri Rousseau was one of the "brave ones". At that time, he still had no other opportunity to show his work elsewhere. The Neo-lmpressionists were the most vociferous supporters of the idea. Georges Seurat and Henri Edmond Cross were responsible for organizing the Salon. The participants were almost exclusively French. This situation gradually changed later: of the 272 painters who took part in the 1910 exhibition, 106 were registered as foreigners. The most prominent figures in the Salon's management were Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Unlike the earlier presidents who failed to leave their marks, Paul Signac played a very important role as "président", as confirmed by the recollections of several people. Between 1888 and 1914, the number of exhibitors grew nearly tenfold, from 144 to 1320. Still, the Salon had no suitable exhibition venue, which put off many a potential participant. Nevertheless, a number of people remained loyal to the Salon, including even some of the greatest artists, such as Paul Cézanne. Then there were others who, for different reasons, only joined it later: Edouard Vuillard in 1901, or the nineteen-year-old Robert Delaunay in 1904. In 1903 the emergence of Salon d'Automne created a new situation, whereby the modern artists from then onward were able to show their work in two salons of liberal atmosphere, not just once but twice a year. Of the future Fauves, Henri Matisse and Jean Puy joined the Salon des Indépendants in 1900; Albert Marquet followed suit in 1901, Charles Camoin, Raoul Dufy, Othon Friesz in 1903, Kees Van Dongen in 1904, with André Derain bringing up the rear in 1905.

10 Roubille's drawing of the Salon des Indépendants. Le Rire, 1910 The Salon d'Automne was not the only one to hold posthumous exhibitions for the most outstanding masters. The Salon des Indépendants paid tribute to Georges Seurat in 1892; it held two exhibitions in commemoration of Van Gogh in 1905, the year when the Fauves burst into the scene. Featuring 45 paintings owned by private collectors from Paris, whose list included Docteur Gachet, Paul Signac, Auguste Rodin and Henri Matisse, the second exhibition was the larger one. Quite understandably, Van Gogh exerted a profound influence on the Fauves. In writing about the works of the Fauvists, contemporary critics did not discriminate between those shown at the Salon des Indépendants and those exhibited at the Salon d'Automne. These descriptions sometimes had an eerie resemblance to the contemporary characterization of the Hungarian Fauves. But just as the Hungarian Fauves had their own defenders (for example, György Bölöni), so did the French, who found an able spokesman in the person of Guillaume Apollinaire, one of the most assiduous critics of the period. In 1908 Apollinaire dedicated a long article to the 24

th exhibition of the Salon des Indépendants,

11 in which he analyzed the works of the Fauve painters taking part, such as André Derain, Georges Braque, Albert Marquet, Maurice de Vlaminck, Charles Camoin, Kees Van Dongen, Henri Manguin, Raoul Dufy and others. Unfortunately, the French papers paid little attention to the Hungarian artists who participated in the exhibition. The first time the Hungarian Fauves made any waves at all at the Salon des Indépendants was in 1906. Then Dezső Czigány and Béla Czóbel contributed works to the exhibition, although these were still not in the Fauvist style. Czóbel first had his works shown at the Salon d'Automne in the autumn of 1905, taking part in the Salon des Indépendants shortly after that. Then, in the summer of 1906, he was already firing up the young artists at Nagybánya. While Czigány and Czóbel were the only Hungarian artists taking part in the 1906 exhibition of the Salon des Indépendants, there were already three Fauve painters representing Hungary at the Salon d'Automne: Berény, Czóbel and Vilmos Huszár. Among the Hungarian Fauves, it was more or less the same artists who sent works to both salons: Berény, Czobel, Huszár, Perlrott Csaba, Sándor Galimberti, as well as Mária Lanow and Valéria Dénes, Galimberti's first and second wife, respectively, and also Sándor Ziffer. Then there were those

—Ödön Márffy, Exhibition of the artists of the Salon des Indépendants Catalogue, 1937