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

AT HOME AND ABROAD - KRISZTINA PASSUTH: Wild Beasts of Hungary Meet Fauves in France

The Fauve painters, most notably Matisse, fell under the sway of NeoImpressionism (Divisionism, to be exact) roughly during the same period, i.e. in 1904. Matisse, who primarily reacted to the style of Paul Signac and Henri Edmond Cross, himself started to structure the surface with tiny dots. He became personally acquainted with the two painters. Being a painter always open to new inspirations, Matisse readily embraced their artistic concept. At the same time, in painting the monumental Pointillist composition Luxe, calme et volupté in 1904, Matisse also paid homage to the principal master of Pointillism, the already deceased Georges Seurat. This interval provides a brief transition period in Matisse's art on his way to developing his own style: it enabled him to break out of the system of heavy and condense colours and to achieve freedom through the use of pure colours. Thus, after the dark period and enriched in experience both as far as concept and technique were concerned, he was able to return to his "proto-Fauve" style from five years back and, by drawing on its results, unfold his own distinctive idiom, the idiom that came to be identified as Fauve painting. This was the time when Matisse built a close friendship with Derain, who up till then, along with Vlaminck, had followed a path independent from Matisse. Born in 1880 in Chatou, Derain enrolled in Carrière's workshop at the Académie Camillo (on Rue de Rennes) in 1898, a few months before Matisse. In the year 1900 he met Vlaminck, and the two jointly set up a studio in an old building at the banks of the Seine, near the La Fournaise, which used to be a favourite meeting place for the Impressionists.

26 It was also around that time that Derain became an enthusiastic copier of the masterpieces of the Louvre.

27 After completing his military service, he once again came to share a stuAndré Derain: Le vieil arbre, 1904. Cat. No. 288. Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris © Photo CNACI MNAM Dist. RMN I © Philippe Migeat, © HUNGART 2006 dio in Chatou with his friend, Vlaminck. For him, the end of 1904 and the beginning of 1905 constituted a transition period, when his painting showed the parallel presence of several influences: Cezanne's, Gauguin's and briefly even Divisionism's. Cezanne's influence was best manifested in his still-lifes painted in 1904, of which three compositions stand out in importance.

28 Imposing in size and monumental in effect, Nature morte

29 depicts a carefully arranged and plastically folded white tablecloth occasionally playing into shades of blue, with a group of white tableware dispersed on it. There is still no trace of the later spontaneity associated with Fauvism, although the bright reds popping up here and there already anticipate Fauvism's coming to life within a few months. But the birth of the new style was not so much evident in Derain's still-lifes, as in his landscapes. It was around that time that he painted his composition of Le Pecq, the series of landscapes depicting the banks of the Seine at Chatou, which mostly show the land from a low angle. The painting Le Viel Arbre (Cat. No. 288)

30 is compositionally divided by smooth and flat planes, adding to the overall effect of languor, apathy and weariness. The colours are matched, with the greyishgreen answering the only spot of bright red, but without any tension or explosion. The painting seems to evoke the atmosphere of Gauguin's early compositions made in Bretagne. In Derain's pictures, the experience of nature is still very close, regardless of the style he uses, and it is always more personal than in Matisse's case. The explosion of colours took place in 1905, when the two artists spent the summer in Collioure, working in the most beautiful natural surroundings possible. Despite his background (he had fifteen years of academic training behind him), Matisse accepted André Derain as his equal. He did not regard Derain as a rival, as he did Picasso all through his life.

31 Although Derain possessed considerable knowledge and practice in painting, which he had built up just as deliberately as Matisse had done, he accepted the lead and the professional superiority of the elder artist. In the meantime, he was almost instinctively abandoning himself to the dynamism of colours. Matisse's careful, logical and consistent progress counterbalanced Derain's wild compositions, which were apparently based on a single concept: the power of colours. And from the combination of the two resulted what contemporary, traditional critics referred to as "couleur primitive" or "couleur sauvage".

32 By and large, both designations referred to the same wild hue of red, which the audience found so provocative, and which characterized not just the landscapes, but in certain cases also the human bodies. The reason why these wild, "primitive" colour schemes were able to deliver such an overpowering impact at the Salon d'Automne of 1905 was that it was not one or two individual paintings or artists which employed them but an entire group. This unity of expression set them distinctly and scandalously apart from the rest of the exhibiting artists. Taken as a whole, it amounted to a minor revolution in art. Very rarely would the French Fauves attempt such a demonstration, and the Hungarian Fauves never. An example of genuine group identity would come much later in Hungary, when a radical

—and then still unnamed

— group splintering off MIÉNK (Society of Hungarian Impressionists and Naturalists) went on a tour in Transylvania in 1909 organised by György Bölöni. Even when the works of Béla Czóbel and Róbert Berény were included in later shows in Hungary, this would not make the Hungarians' exhibitions Fauve. Since paintings with Matisse-style, decorative colour fields and lacking any perspective were shown together with compositions reminiscent of Cezanne's works, the characteristics