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

2. Péter Dobrovics: Adam and Eve, 1918. Janus Pannonius Museum, Pécs modern life. It was then a conscious decision on their part to depict the built environment beside/instead of the landscape, as the scene of their new, fundamental, urban experience, the cradle of their modernist approach. Their style, on the other hand, which they evolved following Dobrovics (Fig. 2), established close links with the Renaissance masters, whose works they were studying, and copying whom they derived skills and inspiration. Weininger 's early notebooks, returned from New York by the Weininger Foundation in 2002 with other items from the estate (now being catalogued),

15 reveal their method of copying figures from Raphael, Titian (Fig. 3), Giorgione and Tintoretto, in order to draw their own conclusions. Farkas Molnár

's first sketchbook of 1915, now in private hands, contains similar nudes. It seems then that the Pécs artists drew their knowledge of Italian Renaissance from books,

16 while it was Dobrovics who introduced them to modern developments of classic compositions. In the years following World War I, the quick succession of five regimes - the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the Hungarian Republic, Serbian occupation in November 1918, the Serbo-Hungarian Republic of Baranya-Baja in August 1921 and the Hungarian Monarchy after the town was reclaimed by Horthy - and the resulting cultural anarchy provided relative freedom for artists. Economic hardships, on the other hand, made the troubles and responsibility of the artists grow, their role in creating and maintaining intellectual and material values more important. Typically, between 1918-1921, anew journal was launched in the town in every ten days. Beside Dunántúl, which was banned in March 1921, and Pécsi Napló, the most interesting was Krónika, twelve issues of which came out between October 1920 and June 15, 1921.

17 It was all the more important as its logo was based on Farkas Molnár's expressive ink drawing of a man writing or drawing, and was the only periodical in Hungary to run a series discussing the various isms, from the pen of Gusztáv Gebauer and Farkas Molnár. The editor, Lajos Kondor too was a returnee from Budapest, like Molnár and the youngest members of the group, writer Zoltán Csuka, who would later become editor of the journal UT, his brother-in-law and exhibition organizer Rezső Schuber, and their friend, writer János Kodolányi.

18 Club life was very active in the early 1910s: in 1912 there were 424 societies and associations in Baranya county.

19 After the interlude of the war, new societies appeared at the end of the decade. One of them was the short-lived Pécs Arts Society ( 1920-1921),

20 which can be considered the precedent of a larger and less exciting organization, the Pécs Society of Artists and Art Lovers (1926). Isolated as they were from Budapest, the modernists of Pécs became a peculiar group with an international outlook. 3. Andor Weininger: Copy after Titian s Sacred and Profane Love, 1915. Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest