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

Zwickl András: Nagybánya és a aktfestészet

could also be interpreted as a continuous effort to achieve independence from literary and topical allusions. During this process, naked figures in a natural setting served as instruments of the new interpretation of Nature: plein air. After the appearance of the neo style in 1906, a new chapter started in the genre of nude painting as well. The nudes produced by the neos, artists who were following in the footsteps of the Fauves, first of all became independent thematically from the earlier, traditional topics, and the erotic connotation disappeared totally from their pictures (Béla Czóbel: Boys Sitting. ca. 1906-07). Everyday scenes became more common. The compositions with nudes no longer required a concrete Biblical or mythological theme; instead, they acquired a kind of universally allegorical, Arcadian implication. The most significant change, however, was that the human body as a form came into the focus of attention. The naked human body developed into one of the most important media of modern art. There are two basic types of interpretation of the human body. One is characterised by planar-decorative forms: a bold contour holds together the simplified surfaces, the picture is dominated by strong colours. This style was not only characteristic of the younger artists, like Tibor Boromisza (Bathers. 1909), but also appeared in the paintings of the older masters, such as Béla Iványi Griinwald, whose pictures were tinted with similar elements of Art-Nouveau origin (Gypsy Girls on the Shore of Lápos. 1909). The plasticity of forms became the essence in the other type of interpretation of the human body; here the colours were dark, often almost monochromatic. During the 1910s, after already having left Nagybánya, the artists pursuing this latter category progressed as far as creating fragmented, Cubist compositions. Lajos Tihanyi (Dancing Nudes, ca. 1906) and Vilmos Perlrott Csaba are good examples of the process which led from being educated at Nagybánya to continuing a career in Budapest in one of the pioneering groups, like Nyolcak (The Eights) or Fiatalok (The Youths). The neo period in Nagybánya nude-figure painting was characterised by the revival of painting studies and experimentation. Some artists even created almost autonomous nude compositions, which were devoid of any topical context and embodied pure problems of form. (Valéria Dénes: Gypsy Girl. 1913). During the First World War the illustrations in Lajos Kassák's journals (A Tett, MA - The Action and TODAY) consisted mainly of nudes produced by artists trained in Nagybánya. The influence of the figurative wing of the Activist movement survived stylistically after 1918, but the cubistic-expressive forms were combined with a voice which was reminiscent of earlier times. The nude figures were once again placed in symbolical-allegorical compositions in a landscape setting (István Szó'nyi: Female Nudes Standing. 1918). The tendencies which gradually developed into a kind of Neo-Classicism united many different influences during the 1920s. The "Baroque" nude figure compositions of Dávid Jándi, as well as Károly Patkó's, or Vilmos Aba-Novák's idyllic Arcadia paintings (Károly Patkó: Break During Harvest. 1925) were complemented by the exponents of the neo style. Together with Gizella Dömötör's animated and cubistically three-dimensional nudes, Hugó Mund's and József Klein's two-dimensional nude figures, which were defined by rounded contours, were the last in the line of nude compositions in the course of modern Hungarian art (József Klein: Scene, ca. 1928). On the occasion of the Exhibition of Nudes at Műcsarnok in 1925, the pictures of several generations were seen together, illustrating the history of this genre at a time when it had lost its role in the modern art movements for a long interval to come.