Passuth Krisztina – Szücs György – Gosztonyi Ferenc szerk.: Hungarian Fauves from Paris to Nagybánya 1904–1914 (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2006/1)

FROM PARIS TO NAGYBÁNYA - ZOLTÁN ROCKENBAUER: The Fauves by the Danube, or Could Nyergesújfalu Have Been Hungary's Collioure?

Ödön Márffy: Boy and Girl on Green Bench, 1908. Cat. No. 169. visited me at Nyergesújfalu, we buried the work of an entire summer in the trenches under the grapevines. [...] This might explain why I love the wine of Nyerges! "

8 Ödön Márffy, in his turn, recollected the events as follows: "Czóbel went down to Nyergesújfalu before I did: during the time that I stayed there, I can recall only a small number of artists who came to Ny.ujfalu. Vaszary, Szőnyi and Pál Bor were there once, but they did not join our circle."

9 The different sources all agree that Czóbel first visited Kernstok's estate in the year 1907, more or less when Károly Ferenczy caught news of Kernstok's assembling the Neos of Nagybánya in Nyergesújfalu.

10 In a letter written at the end of April 1907 to his wife, Itóka, György Bölöni mentioned that "Czóbel traveled to Trans-Danubia, to paint at Kernstok's estate."

11 It appears that no other painter was present during that summer. In all likelihood, Ödön Márffy began his regular visits to Nyergesújfalu only in the spring of 1908. Kernstok invited Márffy in 1907, after he had discovered the lavish colour composition of the young artist who had just returned from Paris. "I cannot remember the precise year, because it was so long ago," Márffy wrote fifty years after the events in response to Iván Dévény's inquiries. "It was probably either in 1908 or in 1909 that I first went to Nyergesújfalu, regularly spending the subsequent summers there. The last time I went there was in 1921, when Csinszka was also there with me."

12 Márffy, too, Károly Kernstok: Peasant Child in Nyergesújfalu, between 1908-1910 Cat. No. 147.