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

Kostály László: Egy csaknem elfelejtett nagybányai festőről: Udvardy Ignác Ödön

The Almost Forgotten Nagybánya Painter: Ignác Ödön Udvardy LÁSZLÓ KOSTYÁL Until recently, the name of Ignác Ödön Udvardy (1877-1961) was almost forgotten. He fell into oblivion, as far as both the general public and the researchers were concerned, in spite of the fact that he had been an acclaimed figure and, for a period, an elected official of the Nagybánya artists' colony during the 1920s and 1930s. He was born in 1877 in Zalaegerszeg. After graduating from the School of Artistic Drawing in 1901, he became a teacher at the Secondary School of the Premontrean Order in Nagyvárad. When the school was closed in 1920, the Romanian authorities gave him a pension. He moved to Nagybánya in 1924 and started to work with the members of the colony, and for a while also with the Felsőbánya colony. In 1926 he was elected a regular member of the Nagybánya Artists' Society; later he became its deputy director. As a founding member, he participated in the first exhibition of the Miklós Barabás Guild at Kolozsvár in 1930. At first he was financially successful; on more than one occasion, all his works at an exhibition were sold. He bought three houses in Nagybánya during the 1920s, but he was forced to sell them one by one during the thirties. After 1930 he lived a secluded life and showed his art only very rarely. In 1938, when he no longer could afford to live and work in Nagybánya, he returned to Nagyvárad. Following the great success of two exhibitions he moved to Budapest, but the war forced him to return once again to his hometown in 1944. The last fifteen years of his life brought a lot of hardship, but he tried to adjust to the new circumstances. Far removed from the national spotlight, he was a respected member of the local artists' society. His seclusion might have eased after an exhibition in Budapest, which was due to take place in the year of his death, 1961. The majority of his bequest was annihilated or scattered. The mostly small-scale paintings and studies which have survived might perhaps convey a general impression of his style, but do not give enough information for the reconstruction of the whole oeuvre. His style in Nagybánya integrated Impressionism, which was based on plein-air traditions and Expressionism, which he became familiar with in 1922 during a visit to Germany. Sometimes these influences mixed with decorative, Art Deco or Cubistic elements. He belonged to the second, "neo" generation of Nagybánya. The beauty of the surrounding landscape, with its hills and forests, clear air, bright colours and gleaming light, and the life that went on in the small mining villages provided the basis for his pictures and those of his comrades. He goes beyond Naturalism and the Impressionism of the first generation, and similarly to Sándor Ziffer, he expresses his ideas and emotions with thick, dynamic, sometimes undulating brush movement, and often with colours powerful in their somberness. In some of his townscapes, the dissolved composition gives way to strictly constructed order. At the same time he liked to use fine tones and complementary colours. His pictures are more the expressions of his own feelings than documents of the outside world. After he left Nagybánya, his style changed. He became more interested in people, his colours became lighter, his works more decorative and calm. Far away from the inspirations of the landscape and artistic environment, he was no longer able to maintain the same standard.