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
were indicative of the appearance, at around 1915, of a stance which was based upon the art of Rembrandt and Michelangelo, and which became the point of departure for many a young artist. 8 A further possible influence was Adolf Hildebrand's work on the problem of form in art (Das Problem der Form in der bildenden Kunst), in which the author praised 'architectonic compositions' approximating those of Michelangelo. The Hungarian edition came out in 1911, 9 and the translator was János (Johannes) Wilde, a friend of József Nemes Lampérth, which means The Seven were likely to be familiar with these ideals. Young Hungarian artists, in other words, met the classic tradition not in the form of a strict, academic model, but as an almost plastically dense, expressively classicizing modern art (sculptor Géza Csorba joined The Seven in 1917) which seemed to follow up the lessons of the nude compositions of Nagybánya masters Károly Ferenczy and Béla Iványi Grünwald, as well as of the above mentioned attempts of The Eight. The person to be the earliest (1914) and most consistent representative of the aspirations that became conspicuous at the 1916 Nemzeti Szalon (National Salon) exhibition was Péter Dobrovics (Petar Dobrovic 1895-1942), a Serb bom in Pécs. 10 Having seen the cradle of modernism, Paris, and being barred from returning to it by the war, he came to the conclusion that posterity would remember not the conservative or modern extremes, but those 'who come closest to the notion of the Eternal, the Great, the Absolute" 1 . Accordingly, Raphael, Titian and Ingres became his paragons, beside Cézanne. He not only followed their lead in his own art, but communicated the same classicized modern spirit to his students and artist friends in Pécs. It was with such precedents that the Pécs Arts Society was formed in 1920. Of The Seven, Dobrovics was to follow the Renaissance tradition most persistently, 12 while those who gathered around Lajos Kassák's journals A Tett and MA dedicated themselves to modernism and activism. In an extraordinary detour, Uitz made a temporary return to the great models of the Renaissance in 1920, at the beginning of his exile in Vienna. Tradition was again to provide a haven amidst the chaos of the times, yet instead of continuing the 'peasant Arcadia' compositions he had made in Kecskemét, he prepared a rather unimaginative fresco study after Michelangelo's Last Judgement. His Humanity, a composition treating on recent events, proved a dead-end, rather than a way out. The classicizing practice of The Seven found its sequel in the activity of an arts community in Pécs, under the guidance of Péter Dobrovics. 13 Dobrovics became the president of the Pécs Arts Society, founded by his students and followers in 1920. Members included Farkas Molnár (1897-1945), Hugó Johan (1890-1952), Jenő Gábor (formerly Ftacsik, 1893-1968), who became by marriage a relative of Molnár, and 1. Hugó Johan: Pécs in Winter, 1917. Private collection those recently settled: Lajos Cacinovic Tarai (1886-1973), a Croat who came from Drávamoszlavia, Henrik Stefan (Szelle, 1896-1971), whose family belonged to Fulda, Germany, and who moved in from Máriakémend, Andor Weininger (1899-1986) from Karancs (now Croatia), and Ernő Gebauer (1882-1962), who was born in Hartberg, Styria. Home to several ethnicities (German, Serbian, Croatian) and religions (Catholic, Israelite, orthodox) since the 18th century, Baranya county provided a unique cultural microclimate for the artists of Pécs in the 1920s. Hugó Johan's fine modern aquarelles with the cathedral (Fig. I), 14 Henrik Stefan's and Andor Weininger's Fireworks in Pécs (1919) or Pécs View (ca. 1920), the landscapes of Ernő Gebauer and especially of Jenő Gábor - Pécs Vista, A View of the Cathedral, Havihegy with the Church, Tettye Tavern, Abaliget Cave - all suggest that the painters constituting the nucleus of the Pécs Arts Society held the town in great esteem. This was so not only because of its colourfulness and wonderful, quasi-Mediterranean natural settings, but also because this was where they first encountered such wonders of technology as the telephone news service or the cinema. This was where warm sunlight transformed every shape, and where they first saw electric light and trams. For them, and especially for those moving in from the villages around Pécs, the town was a metropolis teeming with the miracles of
