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

favourite colours were carmine and scarlet. This mode of expression was less popular among contemporary Hungarian painters. Instead, the young Hungarian painters, most notably Berény and Czigány, were often more interested in provoking their audience with surprising and unusual motifs. This was the case in many of their portraits and nudes, such as Dezső Czigány's Self-portrait (Cat. No. 95), for example, in which the model's dress, face and hair were chopped up by vivid green blotches. The overall effects of the bold colour schemes and the unusual rendering of the composition served to astonish the audience. Auguste Chabaud was one of those French Fauves, who were described by Gelett Burgess as the "wild Beasts of Paris"

103 Braque, Derain, Friesz, Czóbel, Herbin, Chabaud and Metzinger were named as the seven "wild Beasts",

104 in other words, the group was not even made up exclusively by "Fauves". There is no denying, however, that Derain and Chabaud could come across as "wild men". In the photograph published here, we see Derain sitting in his studio, surrounded by his sculptures: he is shown with a sketchy and rough stone sculpture of a female nude behind him, while he is holding the statue of a cat, which he painted crucially in red and yellow.

105 The same bright and wild colours figured prominently on the sculptures of Dahomey, which Derain bought from Vlaminck somewhat earlier, presumably in 1906. (Vlaminck had stumbled on them in a pub.) He discovered tribal art, to be more exact, the polychromatic Yoruba sculptures, through these statues. Therefore, he associated the raw power of African sculptures with these colours.

106 Chabaud enrolled in the same schools as Matisse and Derain, including the Julian Academy, but since he was doing his military service just as Fauvism was making its mark, he was absent from the 1905 Salon d'Automne. It was not until 1907 that his Fauve paintings were shown at the Salon des Independents and Salon d'Automne, when the era of the real Fauve discoveries had more or less been over. In spite of this, his painting Wette (Cat. No. 287) is even "wilder" than the pictures of the early Fauves. In constructing the painting of his strange and rather repulsive female figure, he practically used nothing but red and black patches. Her dark hair resembling a wig, her wide-open eyes encircled in black, her distorted red mouth and snow-white body, together give the viewers the impression that she is a prostitute living at the edge of society. The fragmented female figure against the red background, together with the chequered floor, created an intense effect that probably none of the earlier paintings had been able to achieve. In any case, this composition clearly shows the potential limitations of Fauvism in this field. Having exhausted its possibilities, the movement clears the way for something new. Henri Matisse: Nu couché I., 1907-1908. Cat. No. 298. Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, © Photo CNAC ! MNAM Dist. RMNI © Philippe Migeat © Succession H. Matisse i HUNGART 2006