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

Szücs György: Nagybánya - változó időben

weapons were placed side by side with works of art. Old art was represented by Károly Marko, Károly Lötz, János Jankó and József Mezey, among others, while "the painters of Nagybánya today" included János Thorma (portraits of Lajos Bay and Irén Bilcz), István Réti (Portrait of Mrs Károly Buday) and Zsigmond Nagy (Still-life, Portrait Study, Fop).

14 These scattered data preceded the millennial year of 1896, which marked a radical change in the customary life of Nagybánya. Artists headed from Munich to Nagybánya stopped over in Budapest and first of all viewed the picture exhibition, discovering the art of Pál Szinyei Merse for themselves.

15 Alongside the enormous number of academic works, only a few pictures represented the artists who were to launch the revival of painting in the forthcoming years: István Réti's Torment (1894), János Thorma's Sufferers (1892), István Csók's Holy Communion (1890), Károly Ferenczy's Bird's Song (1893). The town was only represented by ladies' needlework, agricultural and industrial products, mining and raw materials at the millenary exposition, besides the successor to Ürmösy, the photographer Elek Kovács.

16 At that time, what lent Nagybánya a unique colour was indeed its folk art and its mining. The account on the Veresvízi mine stated: "It takes part in the exhibition with virgin gold mineral pieces, from reef and secondary rock, 99 pieces for crushing in 4 copies, with maps."

17 The town and its vicinity were ready for an encounter with the painters, with only a few new aspects to be added after 1896. Around 1910 Art Nouveau left an imprint on the townscape: the Grand Hotel in the main square, which had burnt down, was replaced by the representative István Hotel, whose pliable lines were reiterated in the new Greek Catholic church. Ferenczy's Evening in March (1902) still shows the former small 18th-century church. Along the road to Felsőbánya, the new Lutheran church rose skywards the altar picture of which (Christ in Gethsemane, 1903) had been painted by Béla Iványi Griinwald for the former stone church. At the beginning, the painters only crossed the Zazar to go to market or to local entertainment; they roamed the woods, the Virághegy and the Kereszthegy, the Klastromrét in front of them, and often made outings to the Izvora plateau at a distance of a few hours' walk or to the Rozsály and Gutin even farther off. The new studios were built right next to the river, (1911) and as the colony drew closer, more and more paintings began to feature buildings of the historical kernel of the town: the red-roofed Calvinist church, István Tower sporting a historicist spire of the millennial celebrations or a "posted" townscape gathered along the river Zazar. The artists often dragged their easels to István Tower, from the windows and gallery of which a truly picturesque panorama could be seen. In 1908 Lajos Tihanyi chose the Minorite church (View of a Street in Nagybánya), Sándor Ziffer chose the twosteepled Holy Trinity church (View from István Tower) as their themes. Most artists still lodged in the miners' cottages in Veresvízi Street along the Liget (Park), getting cheap room and board in the summers. "Little houses and squares and ancient gateways, / The green silken grass in the gardens abounding with children. / The stag is happy roaming in the fragrant valley, / and the stones lie scattered in the brook like dead hearts." - this is how Emil Isac responded to the romantic atmosphere of the town.

18 III. Réti was aware, and stressed in his writings, that the founding generation was bound by common origin and a common world view which buttressed their art in terms of attitude and way of life. "I wouldn't like this word 'úr' (lit. gentleman, mister) to be misunderstood. In the sense I use it it has a denotation of character, not social position. It is akin to the English 'gentleman' but not identical with it. Compared to the latter, he is characterized by a more tender heart, more extreme temperament, while on the other hand a greater love of comfort influences his thinking and moderates the rigour of his principles."

19 The writer István Nagy who visited Nagybánya four decades later, in 1938, stood for the opposite side. He was interested primarily in the social and welfare situation of the miners, which made him view "landscape country" quite differently from the majority of visitors. The outcome of his visit is no poem capturing the atmosphere of the historical town, no enthusiastic report, but a strict and raw account in Brassói Lapok. The Veresvíz (lit. red-water) stream "might be washing the blood of miners bled to death in the depths of shafts," he mused among the hip-roofed houses. Nor can one wonder that he was captivated by the wooden carvings of Jenő Szervátiusz and Géza Vida, and by the socially sensitive painting of József Klein he saw at an exhibition.

20 Within the past half century, the wheels of history have made a full turn. These two writings may symbolically mark the outer limits between which the art of those temporarily working in Nagybánya (Oszkár Glatz, József Koszta), of the faithful preservers of values (András Mikola, János Krizsán, Samu Börtsök) and of the constantly reviving artists (Béla Iványi Grünwald, Tibor Boromisza) alike can be interpreted. Réti's life was characterized throughout by a melancholic tone which became palpable in his writings after the emergence of the neos (a nickname given to the advocates of the new style) (1906). The collapse of the community of common origin and world view cast before him the vision of the colony's disappearance, or at least signified a growing distance from the original ideas, the replacement of the plein air approach envisaged by the founders. He felt that evolution had given ground to revolution so alien to the spirituality of the founders. Though reluctantly, he welcomed in 1909 the arrival of something new as the catalyst of progress. "It was a pleasure and a delight to see the new