Nagy Ildikó szerk.: Nagybánya művészete, Kiállítás a nagybányai művésztelep alapításának 100. évfordulója alkalmából (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 1996/1)
Gábor Zsuzsa: Illusztrációk Kiss József Költeményeinek 1897-es díszkiadásához
bildern und den getönten Kohlezeichnungen und bedienten sich typographisch auf einem wesentlich höheren Niveau zu vervielfältigender, graphischer Methoden. Grünwalds rein ornamentaler Buchdekor sowie die als eine dekorative, graphische Gesamtheit von Bild und Satz interpretierten Buchseiten von Ferenczy zeigen, daß die beiden Künstler die modernen englischen und französischen Bestrebungen verstanden und ihre Anwendung anstrebten (Das Mutterherz [Grünwald] und Prolog, Bei der Statue von Arany, Das Lied des Nähmädchens, Im Wald [Ferenczy]). Die Betonung der graphischen Rolle der Konturen, der in die Ebene transponierte Raum, die die Gesamtheit des Bildes erfassende, einheitliche dekorative Konzeption - also die sezessionistischen Stilelemente - wurden in Ungarn zum ersten Mal von diesen beiden Künstlern angewendet. In diesem Sinne bedeuteten die Illustrationen zum Band von József Kiss und natürlich auch die erste Ausstellung in Nagybánya, trotz ihrer Verbundenheit mit dem 19. Jahrhundert, eine echte Wende. Gleichzeitig war in diesen Werken bereits die gesamte Problematik der sezessionistischen Kunst der nachfolgenden zwanzig Jahre verborgen. Die inhaltlichen und formellen Topoi sowie die dekorative Komponiertheit der westeuropäischen Sezession sind zwar in Erscheinung getreten, sie waren aber nie imstande, sich vom Anekdotismus loszulösen und meldeten sich stets mit naturalistischen Stilelementen vermischt. The Illustrations for the Poems of József Kiss. 1897 ZSUZSA GÁBOR In 1896, during the first summer they spent at Nagybánya, Simon Hollósy, Károly Ferenczy, István Réti, Béla Grünwald and János Thorma were commissioned by one of the most important publishers, Révai Brothers, to illustrate a volume of collected poems by József Kiss. The writer and poet József Kiss became one of the most prominent figures on the Hungarian cultural scene at the turn of the century, mainly in his capacity as chief editor of the bourgeois liberal weekly magazine A Hét (1890-1924). Considering the prestige of both the author and the publisher, this commission meant a definite recognition for the painters. The finished works, more than sixty illustrations, were included in the material of their first joint exhibition in December 1897. Within the career of all five artists, the project meant a slight detour, since none of them were preeminently illustrators. In fact, the resulting works continued to reflect the same painterly problems that intrigued them at the time of accepting the commission: the relationship of man to his natural surroundings, the relationship between naturalism and decorativism and the question of plein air. The heterogeneous character of the book is primarily due to the differences which existed in the artists' respective interpretations of the function and specific possibilities of the genre. We are able to find among the illustrations examples of the "official" salon art of the end of the century (primarily Béla Grünwald's genre pictures, e. g. Lisa, what happened? What is that bothers you?, For a Deceased Poet), as well as psychologically authentic human portrayals in the literary and anecdotal traditions of the Realist school of Munich, even including the depiction of extreme human passions in a presentation verging on naturalism (István Réti: Story about a Pair of Big Boots and a Pair of Small Shoes and János Thorma: György Dózsa, Judit Simon). Although Simon Hollósy continued to rely on the painterly methods of academjsm in his illustrations, the characteristics of genre painting were completely missing, to be replaced mostly by symbolical elements. Károly Ferenczy (and, in at least some of his illustrations, Béla Grünwald as well) turned his back on the oil technique and the tonality of charcoal drawing, both being quite unsuitable for reproduction, and relied on graphical techniques more appropriate to the modern demands of printing (Károly Ferenczy: At Arany' s Statue, The Song of a Seamstress, In the Forest, Béla Grünwald: Mother's Heart). Grünwald's purely ornamental book decoration, together with Ferenczy's total conception of image and text as a single decorative graphical unit, reveal the artists' receptivity to the modern French and English trends, as well as their willingness to experiment in that spirit. The emphasis on circular lines, the planar transposition of space, the decorative conception uniformly applied to the entire picture - in other words, the elements of the Art Nouveau concept - made their first appearance in Hungary through the works of these two artists. It was in this sense, therefore, that despite all their links to nineteenth-century traditions, the illustrations of the József Kiss volume, along with the first Nagybánya exhibition, did indeed bring a great change. At the same time, however, these works already foreshadowed the entire problematics of Hungarian Art Nouveau for the next twenty years: the mixing of Western European Art Nouveau elements, both thematic and formal, and decorative composition on the one hand, with anecdotalism and the stylistic elements of Naturalism on the other.
