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 - PARIS - KRISZTINA PASSUTH: Café Dôme

Berthe Weill; also, he was on good terms with Dunoyer de Segonzac who obviously lent him support, etc. However, from our perspective, his friendship with Adolphe Basler may have even had greater importance regarding the role that he played in Café Dôme. Almost from the beginning, Basler was seen as one of the pillars of the Dôme. Of Polish descent, Basler was born in 1876. In 1898 he moved from Zurich to Paris, where his first art critiques appeared in Polish, German and French papers as early as the turn of the century. His closest friends included Rudolf Levy, the German art critic Carl Einstein, and the Hungarian art dealers József and Ernő Brummer. Together with Zborowski, Berthe Weill and József Brummer, Basler was among the first to take an interest in contemporary modern art. To the extent that their modest financial situation permitted, they all purchased artworks,

21 and then tried to sell them

—to people frequenting the Café Dôme, among others. In any case, after 1909, when József Brummer opened his art dealership in Paris, Adolphe Basler often worked for his gallery, which is well documented in Brummer's account books. Together with Wilhelm Uhde, Basier "discovered" Henri Rousseau's art. Also, in 1924 he wrote the first Matisse-monograph in German.

22 He published extensively on the modernist art of Paris, thus contributing to the promotion and acceptance of French modernism in Germany. In his various articles, Basier often mentioned Béla Czóbel's name. The two men spent a great deal of time in the Dôme, which was evidenced by numerous portraits Czobel drew of Basier.

23 According to our hypothesis, Béla Czóbel's Man with a Straw Hat (Cat. No. 112) portrays Basier, but this needs further corroboration. Basier held Czóbel's art in a very high esteem, regarding the Hungarian artist to be one of the "wildest" among all the Fauves. In one of his writings published in 1927, Basier claimed that Czobel had been a famous painter twenty years ago, whose name was inseparable from the names of Matisse, Derain and Rouault. In his opinion, Matisse probably saw Czóbel's works rejected by the Salon d'Automne, which later turned up in Berthe Weill's boutique.

24 This view supports the assumption that Béla Czóbel's unknown or lost compositions were conceived in a much wilder, much more Fauvist manner than those we know today. The various memoirs usually focus on the artists. In his booklet published decades later, Rezső Bálint, himself a painter, wrote the following: "Day after day, we crammed into the cafés Dôme and Rotonde: Archipenko, Léger, Cardozo, Apollinaire, Brancusi, Pascin, József Csáky, Alfréd Rét, Le Fauconnière [sic!] and Delaunay. [...] We used to go to Café Dôme and Rotonde [...] This was a company of close friends".

25 He failed to mention the names of such people as Walter Bondy, Adolphe Basler, Bela Hein, Joseph Brummer and others, who may not have become famous artists, but who played important roles not only in Café Dôme, but also in the art scene and in the network of Parisian galleries during the period in question, regardless of the fact that they mostly remained in the background. The most probable reason for leaving out their names is that he wrote about a somewhat later period, i.e. the years 1909-1911, and that he had belonged to a different company. It is now almost impossible to reconstruct the history of Café Dôme, along with the identity and life story of the persons, who frequented the place, not to mention the conversations that took place there. From the viewpoint of our topic, the most important point is that lasting friendships and acquaintances were formed there, which fundamentally determined the future lives of those concerned. And finally, in Adolphe Basler's words, the Dôme became some kind of an open university, where those with the broadest educational background (for example, Wilhelm Uhde)

26 shared their knowledge and wisdom with the younger generation, who had just joined the scene of modernism in Paris, either as active participants or as passive observers. Of the various cultural channels, which connected the art worlds of Paris and Hungary, and which linked their ways of thinking and their creative practice, one of the most important institutions seemed to be the Café Dôme, this meeting point in the heart of the artists' district of Montparnasse. The other important centres were Matisse's free school and the flat that the two Steins, the brother and sister from America, shared on rue de Fleurus. André Derain: Portrait of Adolphe Basier 1920 The cover of Adolphe Basler's book entitled Derain Adolphe Basier - Charles Kunstler: La peinture indépendante en France Cover of the book