Nagy Ildikó szerk.: Nagybánya művészete, Kiállítás a nagybányai művésztelep alapításának 100. évfordulója alkalmából (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 1996/1)

Szabadi Judit: Ferenczy Károly pályaképe

ausserordentlichen Größe des Formats - nicht folgen enteignen zu können, wartet Károly Ferenczy in der kann. Während man in den verschiedenen Epochen, esoterischen und beinahe unauffälligen Einsamkeit der Stilrichtungen und Ideologien glaubte, ihn für sich viel wissenden Künstler auf die „Auferstehung". The Painting of Károly Ferenczy The art of Károly Ferenczy is puzzling. Despite the fact that he was the most outstanding figure of the Nagybánya school - the birthplace of modern Hungarian art - and in 1905 became a professor at the Budapest Academy of Fine Arts, and although he and his art were surrounded by the greatest respect even after his death, Ferenczy's painting is difficult to unravel. The stages of his career are very revealing: between 1887 and 1889 he studied in Paris under Robert-Fleury and Bouguereau; upon his return to Hungary in 1889, he settled with his family in Szentendre where, "contaminated" by the fashion of the time, he painted works which were influenced by the French Bastien-Lepage, right until 1892; he eventually freed himself from the bounds of the style, which by then had lost its attraction to him, and moved to Munich in 1893, where he lived until 1896. He was one of the founders of the Nagybánya Artists Colony, where his art soon became the standard to be pursued. His professional prestige eclipsed that of all his colleagues. Between 1905 and his death in 1917 he shared his time between Budapest and Nagybánya. The twenty-five years of his career were dominated by his close relationship with Nagybánya. However, it is precisely this "Nagybánya aspect" which has been the cause of so many misunderstandings concerning his art and which has overshadowed his individual achievements. For although Ferenczy did find in Nagybánya the natural environment he needed for plein-air painting, which was his artistic ambition, his painting went beyond itroducing Impressionism to Hungary - which has generally, almost conventionally, been identified as his major achievement. Ferenczy's most important experience even during the Munich months was the exploration of the relationship between Man and Nature, the co-existence of human and natural life - often in a symbiosis, but with both maintaining their autonomy. The painting Bird's Song is a beautiful example of this link: an expectant woman hugging the trunk of a tree becomes one with the voluptuous vegetation of the forest filled with gentle noises and buzzing life. The relationship between the landscape of Nagybánya and the artistic ideas of Ferenczy resembled that of Gauguin and Brittany and of Van Gogh and Aries. Yet, unlike the Impressionists, the artists in Nagybánya were not simply seeking motifs, but trying to find the kind of emotional inspiration which only a certain geographical region with its geological features and ancient traditions could provide. JUDIT SZABADI "The landscape is monumental on a Biblical scale," Ferenczy wrote about Nagybánya soon after his arrival; and in the following years he painted his series of Biblical pictures: The Sermon on the Mount, Joseph is Sold by His Brothers, Abraham's Sacrifice, Pietà. Man and Nature were both imbued with a kind of inner struggle and piety, yet both became transcendent, as can be seen in the profane paintings he produced during this time (Evening Mood with Horses, Painter and Model in the Woods). They obviously entail much more than the mere, purely optical representation of spatial relations. Ferenczy was never satisfied with the capturing of a fleeting image; as he was inclined to focus on the essence of things, he represented Nature herself in the depiction of one of her little niches. However, a short period of his career seems to contradict all this. Between 1902 and 1906 Ferenczy was the closest to the naturalistic interpretation of the Impressionists, who concentrated, without any emotional impact, on the impressions of the fleeting moment. The paintings he produced during these years (Evening in March, Summer, Woman Painter, Morning Sunshine, October, Picnic in May, Bay with Boat) were randomly cropped out views of Nature, basking in bright sunshine which lights up the entire canvas. But the motifs did not dissolve in the light, and while becoming more colourful and glowing, they retained their objective, informational value, as well as preserving the human presence and imprint on their every detail. All this resulted in Ferenczy producing paintings of classical value even in the most daring moments of formal disassociation. He never gave up the criteria of wholeness and of "formal perfection" rooted in Goethe's concept of art striving for the ideal beauty. Besides his mysticism, which seemingly contradicted his rationalism and secular character, one of the most disturbing qualities of his art was its "contamination" with classical values. His obstinate will to create something of value, which accompanied every single one of his actions, often obscured even his artistic ingenuity. Even during this period, when technical considerations seemed to dominate in his works, he created such emotionally and philosophically meaningful paintings as the touchingly beautiful Children Riding (1905). He never ceased to devote himself to the depiction of human beings in the form of either portraits or nudes. After he left Nagybánya, scenes of urban life also entered his paintings: circus acrobats and wrestlers, orpheum artists and aerialists inhabited his canvases.