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
eludes that underlying all this was Hollósy's radicalism and "his plebeian-democratic revolutionary world view". 56 This was followed by Nóra Aradi's monograph, 57 and mainly from the late '60s by monographs highlighting the second and third generations of the colony as well. 58 In 1963 the Hungarian National Gallery staged an exhibition of the Nagybánya painters which suggested a new Nagybánya image via the persuasive force of the works themselves. 59 In her book of 1967, Krisztina Passuth examines the development of modern Hungarian painting beginning with Nagybánya as a single uninterrupted process; on the basis of a rich set of documents, she demonstrates in detail the continuity of the movements of the neos and the group of The Eights for the first time. 60 The connection, she claims, was established early, in the group centered around Károly Kernstok in Nyergesújfalu in 1907: "Here did the threads first meet: the trends of the neos {mainly Béla Czóbel) and Károly Kernstok which had until then been progressing isolated from each other. Czóbel brought with him his singular pictorial current implying both the Nagybánya style and the endeavours of the fauves". 61 This was then spun on by Júlia Szabó in her book titled A magyar aktivizmus művészete [The Art of Hungarian Activism] : "Searching for the artistic precedents of the activist movement, one also [i.e. similarly to The Eights] arrives at "neoism" and the neos: not only because the activists exhibited the works of neo artists, and admitted some of them into their circle, but also because the art of the Neo-Impressionists was the precedent to activist art both in attitude and style". 62 The organized Nagybánya research required to prepare the turn-of-the-century volume of the art historical manual started in the early '70s coordinated by the Art Historical Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Several issues were included in the research project which were completely new or about which there had been insufficient research findings. These included the role of Munich in transmitting the influence of French art (especially Bastien-Lepage) on Hungarian Naturalism; the analogous examination of plein-air endeavours in surrounding countries; the correlations between art pedagogical principles and esthetic thinking; the connection between Nagybánya and Art Nouveau; the survival of the Nagybánya concept of nature in Hungarian painting between the two world wars; the ethical and aesthetic relationship of post-Nagybánya attempts with Nagybánya, etc. 63 Relying on the findings of earlier and recent research, the authors of the volume published in 1981 64 analyzed the theme far more exhaustively than before and even synthesized it to a certain extent, but the complex of the Nagybánya questions was not closed. Ottó Mezei's book published in 1983 revealed several implications and exposed a multitude of new source materials 65 chiefly elaborating the history of the Hollósy school and the Free School of Painting in Nagybánya on the basis of contemporaneous documents. While discussing in great detail and differentiation the issues of Hollósy's teaching in Munich and Nagybánya and Réti's polemics with the young generation, especially Tibor Boromisza, in the early 1910s, he words a thorough criticism of Réti's attitude and views. He declares Réti's Nagybánya concept to be virtually unequivocally anachronistic, but he does not fail to point out its nuances such as the inconsistencies in his attitude towards the artists of the neo movement. 66 One of the most important implications of Ottó Mezei's work is the total rehabilitation of the personality, art concept and pedagogy of Simon Hollósy, which offers new aspects for further Nagybánya research. He considers the pedagogical principles of the artist asserted in Munich and Nagybánya to be of historic significance for art; extending his researches to the artist's post-Nagybánya period as well, he states: "Hollósy set the same requirement to himself ... which he set to his pupils... his art pedagogical method... rested on the same attitude which characterized the works of progressive young artists of that day. He kept tabs on the latest, living art events in these years. Zsigmond Cselényi Walleshausen, who trained himself under the guidance of Hollósy in 1911-1912, recalled the master as someone who did not stop with Nagybánya, and when Hungarian Naturalism began to score its first successes at home, he called his pupils' attention to Cézanne and Van Gogh and even discussed the theoretical problems of Cubism with them". 67 Mezei derives the estrangement between Hollósy and Réti, and eventually Hollósy's break with Nagybánya, from this evaluation. 68 Most recently, two young art dealers-art historians, László Jurecskó and Zsolt Kishonthy, initiated a new wave in Nagybánya research. The profile of their gallery in Miskolc is determined by the art of Nagybánya, and a great event in their careers was the exhibition in 1992 of a period of Nagybánya painting beginning with the neos. 69 The studies in the catalogue and the readings of the conference organized on the occasion of the exhibition (also published separately 70 ) raised and tackled scores of topics - including the work of several forgotten Nagybánya artists - which had been hardly, if at all, touched on by special literature formerly. This collective marked a great stride forward in the extension of the image of Nagybánya to the interwar period, which calls for a special mention of Jenó Murádin's study titled Nagybánya forradalmai [The Revolutions of Nagybánya], in which he elaborates the third, the avantgárdé revolution of the colony after the founding generation's first and the neos' second revolutions. These were processes which took place, he claims, in the late '20s and particularly in the '30s, under the influence of Cubism, Expressionism, Constructivism and the Paris school. "In this way do I regard it a restitution, a rightful restoration of this period of Nagybánya in the history of Hungarian art, which is inititated by this exhibition [i.e. the one of 1992] on the eve of the colony's centennial." 71 The initial zeal of the work did not slacken later. In the next year, the Miskolc Gallery staged an exhibition of
