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

Csorba Géza: A Nagybánya-kép száz éve

instead of the line and the colour, the main emphasis is laid on structure, on the form seen through a fresh eye, on the equilibrium and mass of things. Naturalistic Impressionism also knew these, only it ignored them for the sake of its own idols..."

32 With this interpretation, Miklós Rózsa practically based the incorporation of the neo movement in the concept of Nagybánya, done much later by more recent Nagybánya research. In his book of 1935, István Genthon also started from Lyka's and Réti's Nagybánya concept.

33 "What its importance derives from is not its school," he writes in the chapter on Nagybánya, "but the hardly half a dozen painters who created a singular style in close cooperation, drawing inferences from each other's achievements. After the previous individual improvisations and bursts, this style channeled the development of Hungarian painting towards an autonomous broad riverbed... It raised timely problems and solved them, it joined the international circulation, building out its own style carefully from its own resources, not by imitating foreign models... the painters of Nagybánya realized that the token of further progress could only be continuous, consistent progress whose achievements would at long last result in the establishment of the Hungarian tradition".

34 This wording also implies allusion to the post-Nagybánya painters, the artists of the Gresham circle. The tableau of Genthon's NagyGlatz Oszkár: Ferenczy Károly arcképe, 1896-97 Oszkár Glatz: Porträt von Károly Ferenczy. 1896-97 Portrait of Károly Ferenczy. 1896-97 {Kat. sz. i Kat. Nr. I Cat. No. 175.) bánya concept also features Károly Ferenczy in the middle, but with even greater emphasis and plasticity. Genthon also directly connects the Nagybánya Impressionism with the painting of the post-Nagybánya school via his lifework.

35 In his excellent Ferenczy monograph of a later day,

36 he sketches the development of the first Nagybánya generation as the background, fitted between the perceptive analyses of works. He also mentions the movement of the neos and Károly Ferenczy's relevant opinion.

37 Genthon enlarged upon the Nagybánya painters on the occasion of the reannexation of Transylvania but this article practically reiterated the thoughts formulated in his book of 1935.3

« It is well-nigh a stereotype in more recent literature on Nagybánya that the concept of Nagybánya hammered out by István Réti and Károly Lyka, especially by Réti, had dominated public thinking until most recently. This is, of course, true to a certain extent. However, the development of the Nagybánya concept, spanning a period studded with great historical, social, spiritual, and artistic crises, is too complex a process itself to let one of its phenomena be generalized to such a degree. Actually quite early, in the mid-1910s, a new conception was outlined which places the Nagybánya image in an utterly new light, complementing it with essentially new hues. The new concept is to the credit of Lajos Fülep. In his art philosophical treatise looking at 19th-20th century Hungarian art from wholly new angles, he addresses himself to Nagybánya painting in terms of the correlation between the notions of universal and national, as part of the question of the national character of Hungarian art.

39 He regards Szinyei's Picnic in May as the signpost of the new epoch and derives the Nagybánya movement from it, laying special emphasis on the significance of Károly Ferenczy.

40 In his aesthetic system he measures any value against formal questions and their timeliness, placing the life-work of Cézanne in the axis of the past and future of painting. Logically enough, at the summit of his Nagybánya concept is his evaluation of the neos. "To exploit the potential latent in Cezanne's art...", Lajos Fülep writes, "is thus the job of his successors. This was partly and one-sidedly undertaken by Gauguin, and later, also one-sidedly, by the newer groups of painters tagged cubist or otherwise; and this is the undertaking of those Hungarians who, in reaction to the Naturalism and Impressionism of Nagybánya, raised the problem of new composition in Hungary. Most practitioners of this movement were reared in the spirit of Nagybánya and owe much to it; continuity cannot be denied. However, the schism was unavoidable as the new generation became aware of the need to supersede the Naturalistic moment".

41 Fülep analyzes the history of painting from the triple aspects of "objectivity and appearance, space and time, and matter and immateriality, with the main criterion being composition: "... it is to the credit of the new generation of painters that in Hungary, where there are no classical artistic traditions, one can actually