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

ing, it is still the best place to learn..." Vince Korda wrote to János Thorma in 1927.

36 At the same time, it is shocking to learn that Thorma dreaded the "pestilent" activity of Sándor Ziffer, and as late as two decades after the neo turn, he warned against Ziffer, anxious for the future of the colony: "There is no one to continue teaching here in our spirit. And it would be a real disgrace if that neo trend flourished here, now that we have saved the school from it so long. It would really be an ugly end to our work."

37 The representatives of the last wave of revival entered the history of the colony around 1930. They entertained leftist values in their world view and in terms of style, combining the achievements of Cubism with the decorative devices of Neue Sachlichkeit. The young "illegalists" András Kunovits, Márton Katz, Sára Kahán, Lídia Agricola and Olivér Pittner, expelled from the school in 1931, chose József Klein as their spiritual guide, the protagonist of a trend trying to synthesize artistic and social messages. He returned home to Nagybánya in 1927 after "having completed, replayed high-speed, as it were - what the painting of Nagybánya had achieved since the turn of the century," his monographer wittily remarked.

38 Both Foujita's well-nigh graphic web of lines and Gauguin's decorative colour patches left their mark on his works. Simplified as they are, his miners, sowers and fruit gatherers have weight; his fresco designs display kinship with János Mattis Teutsch, who was attracted to social painting, and his emblematic workers have something in common with Noémi Ferenczy's art. That was the period when the two painters catalogued as the main representatives of Cubism in Hungary, János Kmetty and Imre Szobotka, were working in Nagybánya. Kmetty made oils and watercolours, and also multiplied graphic works. He had been in the mining town in the mid-20s and the setting relaxed the rigour of construction and slackened the brushwork of his pictures. "Colour became more differentiated and subtly shaded without the hue, the delight in the beauty of sight, disrupting the necessity of construction."

39 Szobotka's Nagybánya pictures also reveal a shift from sharp-edged construction to a pictoriality more in harmony with the movement of the brush. To put it symbolically, Kmetty had brought to Nagybánya his "post-Nagybánya" style from Szentendre, Szobotka from Zebegény. After their "years of apprenticeship", Aurél Bernáth, István Szó'nyi and Béla Czóbel never returned to Nagybánya, but the feedback had been completed. Paralelly a group of the most influential artists followed that kind of painterliness, which on the one hand developped on the basis of Nagybánya traditions, while on the other hand surpassed it. This group rightfully considered itself the advocate of progression. "I am one hundred percent modern," István Csók commented on his art in 1931, for us slightly anachronistically. He perceived the "ephemeral" fashions but saw them as passing episodes. "I will never abandon my draughtsmanship, the subtlety and colours so typical of me for the sake of Cubism." In his view, painters had to "create an appearance of nature".

40 Another painter also starting his career in Nagybánya, Béla Iványi Grünwald, took notice of two trends around this time. "In today's crisis there are two trends emerging in Hungary: Neo-Classicism and the coloristic preoccupation, comparable to the entirely futile speculative attempts to ape strangers and displaying no individual temperament whatsoever on the one hand, and to archaizing, tired, defunct painting on the other."

41 To sum up, one may conclude that Nagybánya was able to integrate ever newer trends over a long period and survive the crucial moments when some decisive personality (Hollósy, then Iványi Grünwald) withdrew and founded their new colonies.

42 The dissident groups often having no common style created or consummated separate art historical qualities. Both modernity (Kecskemét colony, the Eights) and canonized plein-air Naturalism (Miskolc colony) brought along new effects, but Nagybánya's significance had dwindled by the 1930s when it no longer generated but merely registered the emergence of new currents: it had fulfilled its art historical mission. Luckily, Nagybánya never became the plein-air school its founders had envisioned. Its history runs parallel not only to the art of Réti and Thorma but also to that of Vilmos Perlrott Csaba "of Kecskemét" and János Pirk "of Szentendre". Eventually, the pictures created in Nagybánya bear out Ervin Ybl's observation claiming that "although the new credos disrupted the unity of Hungarian Impressionism sprouting from Naturalism," it is demonstrable that the "Nagybánya style" put its stamp on the majority of those who stayed there for however short a time. A new generation of painters emerged in the meantime who remained faithful to nature. "There is no one who would construct abstract compositions while turning his back on nature. That is not permitted by the captivating beauty of the surroundings of Nagybánya, that is not what one comes here for. The dog-holes of city mass housing are a good setting for that. In Nagybánya, nature will always have the upper hand."

43 IV. It would not be right either to keep silent or to exaggerate the post-1945 history of the art of Nagybánya. Very soon, in late January 1945, the first post-war exhibition was opened, which essentially represented the former endeavours of Nagybánya irrespective of Janka Olejnik's Stalin and Lídia Agricola's Lenin. The fifty or so artists included older masters (Sándor Ziffer, András Mikola, Jenő Pászk, Géza Kádár, Béla Balla) and members of the younger generation (József Balla, Szilárd Iván). Exhibits were displayed by artists killed at the end of World War Two (József Klein, Márton Katz).

44 In 1949, a monumental selection of the collection of pictures and sculptures shown in Bucharest the previous year was exhibited in Budapest. Though acknowledging Nagybánya as an important creative venue, the