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

KOVALOVSZKY MÁRTA: A stíluskereső

MÁRTA KOVALOVSZKY The Style Seeker Taking a comprehensive view of the lifework of János Vaszary, the periodically repeated standstills and recommencements in the tension of which his works came into being form an almost tangible streak in his development until the early 1920s when he found the way most suited for his genius. "He was the inquisitive man of Hungarian painting, avoiding all fossilization, dogmatism and narrow-mindedness. He was a bringer of news, and, like all messengers, he was light-footed, keen to move on, easily forgetful of old information," as the art historian Géza Perneczky put it in his 1970 essay. János Vaszary was born in 1867, in the year of the Austro-Hungarian Compromise, and died in 1939, the year of the outbreak of the Second World War; thus the decades of his working life spanned a period of art and history abounding in momentous events and turn-abouts. The artist himself took an extraordinary position in the surge of these processes following or drifting upon one another. On the one hand, he, in modesty and gentlemanly standoffishness, withdrew from the clamorous world of artist colleagues to the lonesomeness of working in his studio. On the other hand, as witnessed by his works and writings, he did have an acute sense of reality and a finely controlled desire to find the style worthy of his talent and best suited to the nature of his character. As a young artist, he tried his hand at naturalism; then, he had lustres of the gold of Art Nouveau and Symbolism lurk in some of his compositions made in the last years of the 19th century; and, later on, sought to match a plein-air vision close to the Nagybánya School with the "poor-man" lyricism of the Great Plains masters. Finally, after the Great War, his talent looking for orientation in many directions, often taking paths leading into dead-ends, was captured by the fiery colour poetics that had come to flourish under the brushes of the early 20th-century heirs of French Impressionism, by their sweeping strokes of brush, the wanton daring of their compositions shaped with the naturalness of breathing, and, foremost, the omnipotent power of colouration. The masterpiece of Vaszary's early years, Woman with Black Hat (Cat. No. 9), convincingly demonstrates that the Budapest and Munich trained artist sought to find the motives that would lead him to a style, to developing his own style, in his Parisian experiences. It was in this picture that the carpetlike decorativeness, which he had shyly held back in other works of this period, unfolded for the first time. Member of the Nabis circle, József Rippl-Rónai had painted his Woman Dressed in Polka Dots Robe only a few years before, in 1889, in which the harmony of naturalism and decorative formation combine with an unusually tart, modern tone. A decade after painting Woman with Black Hat, colour gained an increasingly important role in Vaszary's pictures (Masked Ball, 1907, Cat. No. 49), however, he took a short detour in the direction of stylized pictorial composition (The Raising of Lazarus, 1912, Cat. No. 95). Though this latter proved to lead him nowhere, as a reference mark it does bear significance: this was the point where Vaszary reached closest to the style of the avant-garde group The Eight who sought to unite Art Nouveau, stylization and decorativeness. After working as a war reporter in the First World War, Vaszary often paid visits to the French capital, keeping track of the events, changes and fresh phenomena in the arts. Due to his make-up, he was drawn to, on the one hand, the more facile, unrestrained and colourful visual world of the art of Raoul Dufy, and, on the other, the more relaxed pictorialness of Albert Marquet. A comment by Vaszary is also characteristic of the Hungary of the time: "I love modern art, and I am well aware that that is where the future lies, but I myself am bogged down at Post-Impressionism, and cannot get any further." After the war, he thought that "the forgotten thread could be picked up where it had been torn," and could little imagine the impossibility of this. After the bitter experiences of the existential and intellectual shock of the war, artists often looked for new, tranquil media from which they could draw inspiration. Finally, it was at the end of the twenties and in the early thirties that he found the characteristic, personally-tailored, individual mark, the Vaszary style, that perfectly suited his creative temperament, that gave elementally powerful expression to the joy of sight, of the existence of phenomena dissolving in colour, becoming colour, and also to the delight in the act of painting itself. For all his struggles and disappointments, his personality and talent were in almost perfect concord in the last decade of his working life. Though living in a Hungarian society finding it difficult to modernize, he had always been an unconditional follower of Western, urban-urbane civilization. In his compositions of the 1930s, the leading role was taken by "modern times": a "reality" woven from glittering lights, exuberant colours, lurking shades and a distinctive atmosphere where enthusing novelty and high-life elegance was blended with languid musings and bed-room philosophizing (City Lights, 1930, Cat. No. 150). Vaszary found a subject matter here which many of his contemporaries were interested in. His delicately-faced women often appear in pictures by Vilmos Aba-Novák, István Csók or Frigyes Frank, too. "Vaszary [...] was an artist whose works will perhaps be covered with dust sooner than the memories of his activities as a receiver and transmitter of cultural goods. As time passes, his paintings will slowly fade [...]" This prediction of Géza Perneczky's has not been entirely fulfilled. True enough, several of his works have been eclipsed; yes, he did turn out a number of rashly shaped, somewhat weightless compositions, but he crowned all his periods with a number of masterpieces, and his best works continue to shine regardless of passing time. In the 1920s, he became finally committed to the wealth of colour, the ethereal and fresh beauty of sight, which would free him in a way. It was primarily this freedom that he left to his pupils and the viewers of his works.