Veszprémi Nóra - Jávor Anna - Advisory - Szücs György szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 2005-2007. 25/10 (MNG Budapest 2008)

NEW ACQUISITIONS, NEW RESULTS - Anna KOPÓCSY: Vilma Kiss: Golgotha

ANNA KOPÓCSY Vilma Kiss: Golgotha VILMA KISS: GOLGOTHA, second half of the 1920s (Colour Plate XII) Oil on canvas, 98.5x78 cm Unsigned Inv. no.: 78.143 In 1978, Kálmán Németh donated a number of paintings and works on paper by János Vaszary to the National Gallery.

1 The donor himself was also an artist and a restorer at the Museum of Fine Arts and the National Gallery, and owned a significant collection of artworks; thus he was a person whose expertise was obvious.

2 However, one of the pictures - an unsigned Golgotha attributed to Vaszary stood out from the others with its quite different mode of painting and concept of figure. (Colour Plate XII) It was probably due to this that the painting was stowed away in the depths of the museum stores, and, though officially never reattributed, not once exhibited in contrast to other Vaszary paintings with the same subject matter. Parallel to the re-appreciation of Vaszary's art, the lifework of his pupils, the whereabouts of which were largely unknown, began to be searched for in the beginning of the 1990s. In the course of these investigations, the outlines of a group of female artists began to take shape, hallmarked by the names of Mária Bartók, Anna Czillich, Józsa Járitz, Vilma Kiss, and Lenke Perényi. As representatives of the progressive new generation of Hungarian artists, they exhibited their works at the 1925 exhibition of the New Society of Artist (KUT), actually, laying the foundations of modern Hungarian women's art.

3 Among other activities, they played a significant role in having their teachers, Vaszary among them, appointed during the reforms conducted by Károly Lyka at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1920.

4 The art of the members of the group founded on shared spiritual, emotional and intellectual ties, was closely related to the late expressionistic style of their master; they often took their themes from the Bible, and were particularly interested in the Lamentation of Christ and the Deposition from the Cross as subjects most suitable for conveying a sense of common salvation. They were undoubtedly influenced by Vaszary's Golgotha series, which the artist had worked on for over a decade, what is more, he had also treated the Lamentation theme.

5 It was the emotional tone and reduced colouration of his dramatic Christ depictions conveying a sense of the horrors of war painted around 1918-20 that they took over into their paintings. 1. Vilma Kiss: Wailing Women, 1920s. HNG One of the most talented painters among them was Vilma Kiss (1893-1943), whose oeuvre, like those of the others, sunk into oblivion. This was partly due to her premature death and partly due to her few extant works. Furthermore, she emigrated from Hungary at the end of the 1920s, and the last time her works were exhibited during her lifetime was in 1931, already in her absence.

6 Essentially, her art can be reconstructed from the works she produced still in Hungary in the period between 1920 and 1926. "She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts. Her masters were Oszkár Glatz and János Vaszary. She has received several awards. She worked in Berlin in 1929-31, and currently works in New York. She participated at the KUT exhibitions. In 1926, the art historian Máriusz Rabinovszky introduced and discussed her painting in a lecture," we read in the introduction of the catalogue of the exhibition of "The Female Eights."

7 A letter by Máriusz Rabinovszky, according to which he had wanted to arrange a memorial exhibition from the remains of her estate in 1947, may contribute to reconstructing her biography.

8 It can also be gathered from this letter that she taught at the Reimann-Schule in Berlin,

9 then studied animation-film techniques in New York, and finally settled in Paris. "She is an excellent and powerful teacher," wrote another Paris émigré, the artist Ferenc Martyn in a letter praising her versatility