Veszprémi Nóra - Szücs György szerk.: Vaszary János (1867–1939) gyűjteményes kiállítása (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2007/3)

Tanulmányok: - GERGELY MARIANN : „Kelet és Nyugat". Vaszary János művészete a húszas-harmincas években

rendered the vivacity of his scenes and the pulsating rhythm of jazz perceptible with no more than a few devices, a virtuoso use of simple techniques. Erotic women professing bodily love also appear in his art. He has red-haired nudes lying on couches arouse desire with their nakedness, the teasing glances of divas with rouged lips allure to seek pleasures (Cat. Nos 146, 150, 283). This is the period of the appearance and emancipation of modern woman. Taboos have been shattered; an enlightened woman can try anything she had formerly been forbidden to. After a stirring Paris, the historical atmosphere of Italy provided a soothing change in Vaszary's life. His series of drawings made in Florence are suggestive of the Trecento; figures wearing costumes stroll, chat or have a look around in the pictures he produced here (Cat. No. 178). He visited several cities during his Italian tour; after Perugia and Assisi, he travelled to Venice. Apart from the art lessons drawn from the Biennale, the stir of the Mediterranean area enchanted him. He was fascinated by the seashore, spending whole summers on the Adriatic Coast or the resorts of the Riviera. Visiting many towns, he drew, painted, sketched everywhere, recording all shore scenes, the colourful cavalcade of fishing and sailing boats, furtively observed episodes of holidaymakers on beaches. Vaszary's attraction to nature manifested itself in a variety of ways. It was with creatures of his own fantasy that he stocked the underwater world of his only publicly commissioned work at the time, the large panel painting for the Tihany Institute of Biological Research (1928) (Cat. No. 279). The shady park around the country mansion in Tata (Cat. No. 162), the colourful greenery of a flowery garden reaching in on a veranda (Cat. No. 163), the gorgeous bouquet of spring flowers on a window sill (Cat. No. 168) are the recurrent motifs of the pictures of this period. Vaszary had an almost equal liking for the tranquillity of country life and the bustle of cities and beaches. The Danube-bank panorama with the Royal Palace, the Fishers' Bastion, the bridges, the Parliament inspired him to paint a whole series. He depicted the fashionable public of the Danube promenade in a framing befitting postcards, almost like their Staffage. The men and women come and go in their voguish clothes, chatting, having coffee, idling about, superficially spending their time - all adding to the pleasurable colour of the city scape. (Cat. No. 174) In his picture entitled, The Pincio in Rome, the afternoon stroll of decent couples overlooked by a menacing gendarme on horseback and the reserved movements of priests in cassocks are suggestive of the oppressed atmosphere of Mussolini's Italy (Cat. No. 176). However, the hot sand, the lush vegetation and the joyful company of holidaymakers on the sunny beaches of Italy continue to be inviting. In the 1930s, the elderly painter usually spent his summers on the Italian Riviera, but sometimes he went back to the Adriatic, or travelled deeper South, beyond the Bay of Naples to Taormina. His last works manifest an affinity with the compositions of Raoul Dufy made at the time. Dufy also reported on the shop-window world of the Riviera, his cherished themes being horse races, regattas, scenes of seaside promenades. Both had a contemplative artistic attitude, both were drawn to spectacle, decorativeness, finding the source of joy and beauty everywhere. (Cat. No. 200) Fate was merciful to him, death overtaking him in the full vigour of his creativity in the April of 1939, just half a year before the outbreak of the Second World War, sparing him the experience of the outrage done to the human values of Western civilization he so much honoured. He had no interest for the revolutionary spirit of the avant-garde movements that radically renewed 20th-century art, his middle-class education and social circumstances had defined the limits of his free action. He had drawn mostly on his personal experiences, reacting to the colourfulness of given reality with pure intent, painterly honesty, and left a rich oeuvre to posterity.