Gosztonyi Ferenc - Király Erzsébet - Szücs György szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 2002-2004. 24/9 (MNG Budapest, 2005)

STUDIES - Éva Bajkay: The Classicizing Trends of the 1920s and their Beginnings in Pécs Tradition and Modernity in the Pécs Arts Society

THE CLASSICIZING TRENDS OF THE 1920s AND THEIR BEGINNINGS IN PÉCS TRADITION AND MODERNITY IN THE PÉCS ARTS SOCIETY BY ÉVA BAJKAY An important trait of 20th-century visual arts in Hungary was the attempt to reconcile an acknowledgement of the Renaissance tradition with the search for modern means of expression. Indeed, I think it is a specifically Hungarian phenomenon that these two types of endeavours, which for long could only be considered as existing in opposition, not only lived side by side, but coexisted within the same oeuvre, creative period, group of works or piece. As the stereotypes of subsequent art history, so the manifestos of 20th century isms fail to describe Hungarian art in the period accurately. The appearance of these particular classicizing-modernist attempts was encouraged by a less active art scene and the lag of the local realist-naturalist tradition relative to the international Avant-garde, as well as the hidden expressive dynamism that was responsible for this. The painting of The Eight around 1910 was a case in point, especially the monumental nude compositions of Károly Kernstok and Bertalan Pór, which András Zwickl thinks are the embodiments of a longing not for the past, but for a Utopian future.

1 This is not something that can be decoded from the works themselves so much as inferred from the avant-garde attitude. The turn of the classicist back to the past and the Avant-garde thrust towards the future can in fact be considered two versions of the same Utopian quest for a way out of the hopelessness of the present. In the art of Béla Iványi Grünwald and then of the young artists of the Kecskemét Artists' Colony

2 who joined him, the formal experiments of the isms gave way, in the middle of the 1910s, to classicizing attempts. They sought refuge from the horrors of World War I in a world of Arcadian tranquillity, and their nude compositions were statements for humanistic values. Rudolf Diener Dénes and Lajos Gulácsy were not, in this respect, the most important members of the group - the others being Péter Dobrovics, Béla Uitz, János Kmetty, József Nemes Lampérth and Vilmos Perlrott-Csaba - that called itself The Young (or The Seven) and gave two exhibitions in 1916 and 1917.

3 The timeless serenity of the pictures derived from a mythological, past-oriented classicizing. Those who revived French and German art were after the same primeval, Arcadian tranquillity, but they turned to other sources, like 19th-century Classicism and the art of primitive peoples. At the time of World War I creative solutions emphasizing harmony offered Hungarian artists a passive refuge from the world of struggle and enmity. The representation of human bodies with classic solutions of form and mass, the proportional order of the spatial compositions, the groupings, etc. seem to belong to a nostalgic classicizing which relies on the European tradition. If we subscribe to the view that the persistence of the human frame ab ovo goes against the avant-garde desire for innovation,

4 we may understand why the most prominent Avant-garde artist, Lajos Kassák accused The Young with timeless passivity, and was fearful of the submission of those who fought to gain acknowledgement for them. Kassák's debate with Mihály Babits in 1916 was symptomatic of the clear opposition between the two positions: classic respect for tradition and craftsmanship on the one hand, the primeval force of primitive cultures and the unprejudiced acceptance of human performance, on the other. The two, however, were typically converging in the visual arts of Hungary, with the cubist-expressionist attempts infused with a classicizing practice. Hungarian artists turned back to the classic examples frequently and for a variety of reasons. Due to historical influences and the complexity of areas involved, art history is yet to produce a comprehensive overview. This study wishes to decrease this debt by discussing a small field. The turning away from the present at the time of World War I as indicated above went on to characterize the post-1918 neo-classicist art of not only the Szőnyi group, but also of the lesser known Pécs Arts Society. The early work of Béla Uitz seems to have been a common fountainhead for both endeavours.

5 Isolated as their country was in the 1920s, István Szőnyi, Vilmos Aba-Novák and the others made the picture a representation of personal experience.

6 In Pécs the same period saw an increased interest in modernity. While Szőnyi and his friends stayed in Hungary, Farkas Molnár and his colleagues went abroad in 1921, to study in the cosmopolitan Bauhaus. In Budapest the new generation encountered the works of the Renaissance masters chiefly in the Museum of Fine Arts, in its Library and Graphics Collection. In Hungary too the first three decades of the 20th century were characterized by a periodically reviving interest in the art of Rembrandt.

7 The aesthetic debates carried on in the philosophy discussion group Vasárnapi Kör (Sunday Circle)