Gyergyádesz László, ifj.: Kecskemét és a magyar zsidó képzőművészet a 20. század első felében (Kecskemét, 2014)
Jegyzetek
new dress arrived yesterday from Paris poses in the atelier. On the other hand, in the mornings a nude model lies on the divan or puts a large silk straight slid down earlier in front of a mirror and on its changeant surface suddenly flashes purple and green colour.” The Woman Sitting in a Park (Plate 6) is close to the effect of plein-air and the full-length portrait can be listed among the more moderate works of the artist - who from 1910 primarily lived in the United States of America - that less emphasize saloon-elegance. The Landscape of Florence (Plate 8) of István Zádor (1882-1963) keeps the memory of the Florentine academic scholarship (1909-1910) of the entrant who had worked as a bank-clerk earlier for four years. The special effect of the painting is owing to the spatiality of the theme and the eclectic mixture of his early painting style (Nabis, Symbolism and Secessionism) that could be derived from his studies in Paris before 1909. István Zádor first worked at the Artists’ Colony of Szolnok as a scholarship holder and later became regular visitor of the colony and then an ordinary member Pál Jávor (1880-1923) who studied in Paris at the same time and was known as a member of the same colony from 1906 drew his attention to Szolnok. The style of the Still Life (Fairing, Plate 7) of Jávor is familiar; but the influence of the leading master of Szolnok, Adolf Fényes (1867-1945) is manifested even more powerfully in Jávor’s work than in Zádor’s. “Their still lifes are the lyrical depictions of home where the gingerbread-motif recalls the world of our home well known for everybody and it nearly becomes its symbol. [...] While the works of the Gödöllő colony showed interest in folk art, in the case of these still lifes the objects of folk art are rather decorative elements and the expressions of our mutual identity.” An analogue preserved in Kecskemét of the sample works of Fényes - for example the Still Life with Gingerbread-heart, 1907 or the Poppy-seed Cake, 1910 - is the Laying painted in 1908 (Plate 1). More precisely it is a variation completed with a momentum of a conversation piece (the dress of the young wife can be considered as a symbolic-decorative element, too). Although the artwork of Fényes was not part of the donation of Marcell Nemes because of the correspondences mentioned above we had to discuss it. Naturally, being local patriots we are proud of the fact that Adolf Fényes was a fellow-townsman since he was born on the 29th April 1867 as the son of Simon Henrik Fischmann chief rabbi in their old house near the old synagogue. Unfortunately his life ended unprincipled similarly to many contemporaries. ‘According to a legend the old master, who used to be a respected artist of popular Hungarian folk genre painting and peasant interiors, died of famine in front of the OMIKE, the Jewish canteen.” While in his most appreciated period he was mentioned as the greatest painter of the Hungarian nation and peasant life we fewer times encounter with his works painted after 1913. Knowing his natal and family circumstances the beginning of this period is especially interesting for us since Fényes - compared to his previous artworks unexpectedly - started painting themes of the Bible and the Old Testament. ‘As if he answered with these to the fact that the social relationship broke down between the leading Hungarian stratum and the Jewish intellectual class having assimilated to the Hungarian culture.” The most typical composition of this is The Jews Defeating Amalek’s Army (1915, picture on page 19). Fényes, in order to project his visions and altered emotions according to his pictorial principals, went back - as much as it could be possible - to the masters of Quattrocento, and he tried to emphasize their compositional principals in his works. The central setting shows the use of this ancient method balancing with meticulous care the groups of both sides. Only a small number of figures presents the action of a vast crowd. Fényes employed a primitive technique so as to create the illusion of a crowd with only a few people, therefore, he painted lines of figures setting behind one another (in reality as Flodler he puts them above one another)." “If we consider the list of those who bought works from the representatives of the most modern tendencies we can observe that none of them belonged to the historical nobility (not even sporadically), but mostly to the circle of assimilated urban Jewish people. Although this list is painfully short it is still too long to publish the whole on these pages. However, it is important to mention that among the greatest art collectors of the era Nemes was the only one who purchased works from the »Hungarian fauves«.” (In the collection of Kecskemét one still life of Géza Bornemisza and one of Vilmos Perlrott Csaba can ‘obviously’ be reckoned among the Hungarian Fauves on the basis of their stylistical characteristics and were also painted in the most appropriate period of the category) Therefore, it is not surprising that we can find pictures from the members of the MIÉNK (Circle of the Hungarian Impressionists and Naturalists) as well as of the Eight in the Kecskemét donation of Nemes, although in the case of some painters’ not especially from their “revolutionary” 49
