Nagy Ildikó szerk.: Nagybánya művészete, Kiállítás a nagybányai művésztelep alapításának 100. évfordulója alkalmából (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 1996/1)

Majoros Valéria: Mattis Teutsch János és Mattis János Nagybányán

There was a distinct shift in János Mattis Teutsch's career in the middle of the 1910s, which was mainly induced by the death of his wife. The elements of the landscape, especially the trees, were endowed with symbolic meaning; they were no longer merely records of what the artist observed. His increasingly abstract paintings came articulate feelings of loneliness, pain, sorrow, and rejection. The swirling motion, the glowing warmth or aloof glitter of the colours are very captivating. In some of the paintings, human figures appear or a story is told. Sensations, painted in 1919, was followed by a new series in the 1920s: his Compositions (which the artist renamed Spiritual Flowers during the fifties) were the peak of his career. By this time figures had totally disappeared; what remained were the blue and pink colours symbolizing men and women, and the bud-shape born of their union, in the centre of the composition. This motif, called "sprout motif" by the artist, became a symbol of new life, of birth. This ideology, which stemmed from the theory of yoga, was the focus of Mattis Teutsch's art for years to come. If we accept that he first visited Nagybánya in 1922, we must examine Nagybánya's role in the reappearance of human figures in his paintings after the Spiritual series. By 1923-24 Spiritual Flowers had become devoid of inspiration; there seemed to be only one way out of their monotony, and that was to turn towards figurai compositions. From the very beginning, landscapes, still-lifes, scenes and figure compositions were painted in Nagybánya. The Expressionist style and the abstraction which Mattis Teutsch advocated were alien to the spirit of the colony. In 1922, as well as in 1928, Nagybánya was unable to inspire this kind of art. But it could reinforce those revolutionary changes which occurred around 1923-24, as well as supporting the artist's concepts at the end of the 1920s. The human figure was the focus of almost every single composition the painter produced in 1928. Men and women appeared in the pictures, either dancing, or engaging in some sport, or just standing by each other's side to demonstrate their togetherness, or, as in all the works he painted in Nagybánya, working. He depicted miners in all the paintings produced in Nagybánya. This was not a new theme among the painters working at the colony, as shown by the example of József Klein, who also selected this topic. Those artists who were seriously attempting to discuss social issues in their paintings even formed a group. Although Mattis Teutsch was not a member of this circle of young left-wing artists, he shared their views concerning the relationship between art and society, and the artist's social responsibility, as proven by the book he published in Germany in 1931, entitled Kunstideologie. According to Mattis Teutsch, "active art" - the presentation of the "new concept of the world" - should be centred around the people and should express itself through motion. The "new kind of man ... incorporates mankind in its entirety" and not only in its characteristics. The pictures produced during this period - among them the ones painted in Nagybánya - addressed the issues of statics, dynamics, rhythm and perspective. In 1928 János Mattis Teutsch took his fifteen-yearold son with him to Nagybánya. The author of this paper attempts to assess the pictures he painted at this time. The memoirs of János Mattis reveal the difficulties of growing up "in the shadow of a hard, but deeply emotional artist of a father." This essay tries to illustrate these difficulties through the analysis of the paintings with the aim of proving that, if not in all cases, the younger artist often succeeded in demonstrating his own individuality.