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

Csorba Géza: A Nagybánya-kép száz éve

jectivity. Next to him, on the same ideological footing, one of the most prominent figures of 20th-century Hungarian art history, Károly Lyka, had a leading role in promoting the movement of the Nagybánya painters and later in its art historical analysis. In 1887, Lyka enrolled in Hollósy 's Munich school. From that moment on he was an enthusiastic follower and active promoter of the movement represented by his master and later of the Nagybánya movement. He was the first to inform the public in the press of the transfer of the Hollósy school to Nagybánya,

5 and called the tune in the professional pro-school critical reviews of the first exhibitions.

6 The central argument of his appreciative review of the jubilee Nagybánya exhibition of 1912

7 was the school's free artist training, an epoch-making initiative in art education which was able to emerge because the different autonomous masters were united by the ambition to freely and immediately represent experience without the influence of any "foreign painter, school or doctrine". This, in turn, allowed the "broadest possible liberalism" to prevail in the colony. Although not touching on the movement of the neos, his argumentation also implies tangentially his stance on this issue, one which was more tolerant than Réti's.

8 In his synthesizing essay written in 1925,

9 he analyzes from a certain historical perspective the reasons for the relatively rapid radical change in the public reception of the Nagybánya painters following the general repugnance at the beginning. At the same time defining Nagybánya Naturalism, he concludes that its success was rooted in the first-hand relationship between artist and nature, which in turn was made possible by the deliberate absence of a system or style.

10 "They could persuade the public into accepting the principle," Károly Lyka wrote, "that the important thing in art is not system or current but talent and artistic morals... the art historical significance of the Nagybánya painters probably culminated in the fact that instead of a system, they chose the Hungarian landscape, Hungarian life as their true source."

11 Lyka argues that it was thanks to the first generation of Nagybánya painters that the public came to acknowledge artists who had been rejected up to then, including Szinyei and Mednyánszky. "This moral, and not stylistic, deed is in no way less significant than are the valuable works with which Nagybánya has enriched the Hungarian gallery."

12 All this reflects Réti's ideas, and although the revolt of the neos against the Naturalistic and Impressionistic approach had taken place over some twenty years before, it still hides reminiscences of the polemic with them in regard to style and trends. Essentially the same Nagybánya concept is explicated in more detail in the context of Hungarian art at the turn of the century in Lyka's book published in 1953.

13 He does not touch on the modernist movement except for a mention of Béla Iványi Griinwald, who left Nagybánya in 1909, in connection with the Kecskemét colony; Lyka makes a not too flattering compliment to his "Kecskemét style", calling it the "re-stylization of nature".

14 Although speaking strictly chronologically, Károly Lyka was the first critic, chronicler and theoretician of Nagybánya, the concept emerging from his life-work may be termed secondary. The Nagybánya concept which Lyka had adopted fully, and which was taken later as a starting point by István Genthon and others, had been elaborated in detail by István Réti in his art historical writings produced nearly without interruption from 1900 to his death in 1945. His centrally important work is the foreword to the catalogue of the Nagybánya exhibition in 1912,

15 in which he systematically reviews the history of the Nagybánya colony's events from the Munich precedent to the day of writing and the process of its artistic development, and lays down the cardinal points of his concept of Nagybánya. The latter are as follows: the French derivation (Bastien-Lepage) of Hungarian Naturalism rooted in the Hollósy school in Munich; the differentiation between the functions of Hollósy and the colony by stating that in Munich Hollósy's role had been fundamental, but "it was the Nagybánya group of artists who have brought modern art to stay and be acknowledged, and revived artistic morals";

16 the principles and decisive influence of art education adopted by the Free School of Painting founded in 1912;

17 the appearance of the view in Réti's Nagybánya image that "this remoulded Nagybánya", or the free school established after the leave of Hollósy, created in its first years the truly harmonious situation in which the new generation received the achievements ready-made, "the individual results of the cognition of nature, of the science of seeing as achieved in the spirit of modern art";

18 the conclusion that the outcome of the first ten years was "individual Naturalism and Impressionism";

19 and finally, a brief revision and critique of the neoist movement. In his later writings dealing in more detail with the innovative endeavours of the second generation, Réti speaks in more differentiated terms and appears more tolerant, or at least more understanding than here, where he categorically condemns "the revolt against nature" which, of all places, chose Nagybánya to assert itself for the first time in Hungary. This basic image was enriched by new elements in his article published in Magyar Művészet in 1926.

20 He declares that the Nagybánya painters opened up a new epoch in Hungarian art history in so much as earlier "individual geniuses" represented it: "Only since the emergence and demonstration of the Nagybánya artists has this been different. They have started an era in which Hungarian art has been in direct and constant and conscious contact with the presence of European art, its endeavours and forms of manifestation".

21 At the same time, he stresses that they were the first to achieve independence from foreign influences, deriving Hungarian art from the Hungarian soil. He outlines the development of Nagybánya Naturalism for the first time, pointing out that from the very beginning the younger painters of the colony distanced themselves off from the doctrine of Naturalism in the strict sense which "excluded from among the factors of artistic