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

István Csók and Károly Kernstok—who took part in the Salon d'Automne, but not in the Salon des Indépendants. Obviously, one can hardly draw a clear conclusion from a short list detailing where and why any particular artist exhibited, and where and why any of them decided not to exhibit. Still, some explanation seems to be on offer. Since it was easy to get into the Salon des Indépendants, where there was no jury, logically one would have expected young and unknown artists, especially foreigners, to send works to this institute in large numbers. In fact, if anything, the opposite was true: Csók, Márffy and Kernstok only took part in the Salon d'Automne, where it was more difficult to get in and, as a consequence, acceptance carried greater prestige. The Hungarian Fauves were

—with the exceptions of Czigány and Czóbel—conspicuous by their absence at the exhibitions of the Salon des Indépendants right until 1907; when they suddenly turned up there in numbers in March 1907, it was just as noticeable. Berény, Czobel, Perlrott Csaba and Ziffer, together with two other artists of modern outlook, Ervin Körmendi Frim and Nana Kukovetz, all exhibited works. Save Berény, they were all Nagybánya painters. And since this took place seven or eight months after Czóbel's arrival at Nagybánya, one can assume that their decision to have their works shown in Paris was largely motivated by Czóbel's example. This assumption is further supported by the fact that the Nagybánya painters, who were mostly Neos, were now able to exhibit together with Czóbel, and in Paris of all places. And since they knew that they would have an easier time to get accepted by the Salon des Indépendants, than they would at the Salon d'Automne, where they would have faced a waiting period of several months, they chose Salon des Indépendants. The two other artists who exhibited their works at the Salon des Indépendants besides Csók were practically unrelated to Nagybánya. Kernstok divided most of his time between Budapest and Paris, or sometimes between Budapest and Nyergesújfalu, where he formed his own group, while Márffy worked in Paris and, less frequently, in Budapest. As a first approximation, we can sum up the situation by pointing out that those who had lived in Paris for some time, and who had good connections there, exhibited their works alternately at Salon d'Automne and Salon des Indépendants (Berény, Czóbel). By contrast, those who had links with Nagybánya seemed to prefer the Salon des Indépendants at first, and took their business to the Salon d'Automne only later. In 1908 Robert Berény, along with several of the Nagybánya Neos (but not Czóbel), took part in the exhibition at Salon des Indépendants; the list even included artists who had not shown their works there earlier: for example, Sándor Galimberti and Vilmos Huszár. Interestingly enough, in the next two years, i.e. in 1909 and 1910, no Hungarians took part in the exhibitions of the Salon des Indépendants, while Valéria Dénes, Sándor Galimberti, Mária Lanow and Perlrott Csaba all sent works to Salon d'Automne in 1910. By that time, French Fauvism had exhausted itself, yielding ground to new movements. By contrast, Hungarian Fauvism was still going strong, although it, too, experienced changes. It is conceivable that the various Hungarian formations, such as MIÉNK or Nyolcak (the latter reached its final form in 1909-1910), directed some of the attention away from Paris and the Hungarian groups became more important in the eyes of the Hungarian artists than the salons of Paris. In 1911 the situation slightly changed once again. Valéria Dénes and Sándor Galimberti were the only Neos who exhibited with the Independents: they were not members of Nyolcak, which held its first, comprehensive exhibition in Budapest that year. In 1912 and 1913 Dénes and Galimberti represented the Hungarian Fauves at the exhibitions of the Salon des Indépendants again; then came 1914 and we were back to square one: Czobel represented Hungary with three of his paintings. The outbreak of the First World War caused an interruption in the activities of both the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Indépendants right until 1920. Besides the two salons of modern outlook, the Hungarian artists occasionally also flirted with the conservative salons. István Csók showed two of his compositions at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1905; in 1906, Czobel took part in the exhibition at Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts; Rippl-Rónai had two of his canvases shown at the same institute in 1907; still in the same year István Csók took part in the exhibition at the Salon des Artistes Français with two compositions (one of them was Vampires); and in 1908 his Nirvana was shown at the same Salon.'

2 Strictly speaking, the Fauvist period of the Hungarian artists came to a close with the 1910s; however, the most prolific period of Hungarian Fauvism had already ended earlier. It would not have survived longer, even if Paris had continued to play as important a role in Hungarian painting as it had done between 1904 and 1910. The French Fauves themselves had turned their backs on their own invention long before. In France, but also elsewhere in Europe, Fauvism was replaced by other movements, most notably Cubism. As Jack Flam has demonstrated in his essay,

13 it is impossible to draw a very clear line between French Fauvism and French Cubism. In Hungary, too, the dividing lines between the various tendencies of modernism and Avant-garde were anything but clear. The division was not so much between two stylistic trends as between two periods. The period of Hungarian Fauvism formed part of the intellectual fermentation and international relations that characterized the prewar situation, in which foreign travels, exhibitions, French salons, painting schools, cafés and bohemian characters all played a part. And as for the bohemian character, this applied not only to the artists, but also to the buyers and even to the art patrons. Therefore, it was not just the world of salons that came to an end in 1914; the old lifestyle disappeared, to be replaced by something radically new. Notes 1 Catherine Fehrer, The Julian Academy, Paris, 1868-1939, New York, Shepherd Gallery, Spring Exhibition, 1989, 3. 2 For the Hungarian participation see the detailed list in the Appendix. 3 Paris 1999, 430. 4 Charles Chassé, Les Fauves et leur temps, Paris, 1963, quoted in: Oppler 1976, 15. 5

Czobel, Béla, "Levél a párisi Őszi Szalonról" [Letter about the Salon d'Automne in Paris], Modern Művészet, November, 1905; quoted by: Kratochwill 2001, 19. 6 Gergely Barki recently identified the picture: "Róbert Berény: Children in the Garden, 1906", in: Annales de la Galerie Nationale Hongroise 2002-2004, Budapest, 2005, 71-72. 7 Bölöni, György, Megnyílt a Szalon [The Salon has been Opened], Budapesti Napló, 9 October 1907, reprinted in: Bölöni 1967, 71. 8 Mária Lanov or Lanow (Marie Provázková), Czech artist, studied under Hollósy in Munich, later worked in Nagybánya, was married to Sándor Galimberti, with whom she moved to Paris. Later Galimberti divorced her and married Valéria Dénes. 9The letter is quoted in: Dominique Lobstein, "Le Salon de la Société des Artistes Indépendants: 'premiere et unique application de la liberté en art'", in: Dictionnaire des Indépendants 1884-1914, I, A-D, Dijon, L'Echelle de Jacob, 2003, 20. 10 Ibid., 31. 11 Guillaume Apollinaire, "Le Salon des Indépendants", La Revue des Lettres et des Arts, Paris, 1908, I

e

' mai. Reprinted in: Guillaume Apollinaire, Chroniques d'art 1902-1918. Textes réunis avec préface et notes par L. C .Breunig, Paris, Gallimard, 1960, 63-70. 12 The list of Hungarian artists and their works at the three salons mentioned here have been compiled by Sophie Barthélémy. 13 See Jack Flam's essay in this volume.