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

painter Molnár mentioned in his writings was Uitz, who was working in Vienna. It was a sign of conscious affinities, but while Uitz was struggling with the model of Michelangelo in his large Humanity, Molnár was content to represent the circle of life, his belief in renewal by love, in a small lithograph, a composition conforming to the classic canon of forms. Painters and the essayists of the short-lived journal Krónika alike longed to leave the dissonance of the present for a classic harmony. They thought it was Italy, the cradle of Mediterranean culture, rather than Pécs that was to be the perfect scene for a renewal of their style. It was in search not only of new impressions but also of historical anchors that Molnár, Johan and Stefan decided, in April 1921, to travel to Italy. They hoped to find inspiration in the home of Renaissance art, the source of tradition, under the charm of the Mediterranean landscape. Later István Szőnyi, Károly Patkó and Vilmos Aba-Novák followed suit, as did Alexander Kanoldt and others in Germany. But while they chose classicization in lieu of the subjective, the Pécs artists rendered their impressions of the land in a cubist-expressionist form of heightened intensity. In an April 1921 letter from Florence, Molnár declared that they saw the energies of the Renaissance and the artistic revolution of the 20th century to be flowing from the same source, Italy. While their experience of Italy made the painters more sensitive, they did not become overwhelmed by the vision or the cultural legacy. 'Art deriving from the contraposition of the intellectual and the emotional seeks to be dramatic. The individual, on the other hand, is responsible for its lyric quality',

44 wrote Molnár. Unlike Iványi, Pór or Uitz, they were not attracted by Rome, nor were they overcome by the beauty of the coast as were János Vaszary or Róbert Berény; they became receptive to the splendour of Toscana's hills, the San Miniato of Florence, the Monte Ceceri, the Monte Venere, Orvieto, Fiesole and Taormina. They were after a complete experience of the richness of nature and the human intellect. Their landscapes consequently became not speculative exercises in form, but individual works instilled with the force of their own personalities. The artists of South Pannónia had a natural fascination with the Mediterranean, with Latin culture, which explains why their mode of expression remained more powerful and individual than that of those wielding the classic tradition as a shield, like the members of the later 'Roman School' in Hungary or the artists of dictatorships in Germany after 1933. They made the most beautiful paintings after returning from Italy: Molnár relied on his memories when painting Orvieto, Monte Ceceri, Chiostro San Francesco or the Blue Landscape, as did Johan in the case of his oil painting, Sicily'.It is a fact that the Italian feeling was the clearest in the icy Berlin winter, and that was where 9. Farkas Molnár: Anchers, 1922. Private collection I made the warmest canvases on Italy', wrote Johan later.

45 Distant from the original impression in space and time, these works are marked by a more intensive abstraction and colour dynamics. 'I often feel that I can express my spiritual experiences only with abstract forms, and unfortunately I can rarely make the abstract formal idiom suggestive enough for the viewer'. Released from the bondage of the vision, forms were regrouped according to a painterly order determined by lights and complementary colours. The surface of the oils is pulsating, their energy seems to exert pressure on the compositions from within. The Pécs artists painted more expressive pictures about Italy while staying at home or in Germany than the Munich neo-Nazarenes (Kanoldt, Hofer, Lenk) in Italy. They shared a method of emphasizing motifs under a high horizon by a plastic modelling of space, but while the Germans seemed to foreshadow the austere, additive construction technique of New Objectivity, the Pécs group kept more of the expressionism that derived from their temperament. Distance, which contributed to the monumental effect, was coupled with an intensive reaction to the experience of colours. The crystalline construction of the representations of the mountain towns they probably chose out of nostalgia for Pécs shows their familiarity with the objective method of the early cubists - Picasso, Braque, Derain - with which the latter attained order within the picture, while their mode of expression is more