Katalin Gellér: The art colony of Gödöllő 1901-1920 (Gödöllő, 2001)

MASTERS OF »HUNGARIAN SECESSIONIST« FOLK ART AS THE SOURCE 1900 - the year of the Paris World Fair - witnessed the triumph of the Art Nouveau style; the greatest impact on Hungarian artists was exerted by the Finnish pavilion that displayed nationalistic endeavours. During his visit to Hungary, the pre-Raphaelite Walter Crane spoke rapturously about the richness of Hungarian folk art's floral ornaments and the beauty of peasant embroidery reminiscent of Persian and Indian art. This also a contributed to and reinforced many artists in their conviction that a national variant of secessionism could, and had to be developed. As Károly Lyka put it; "All artistic trends are differentiated by nationality..." (1902) The Gödöllő artists, who wished to continue the trend begun by Ödön Lechner's architecture and knew József Huszka's historical collection, turned to folk art and the historicalmythological tradition as their two major sources. The inspiration of folk art played a singular and important role in their work. They traversed the country, often working for Dezső Malonyay who tried to present the art of the Hungarians in a monumental series of volumes. They made drawings of costumes, buildings, genre pictures of customs. They incorporated in their art the relics of Kalotaszeg, the Matyó region and some areas of Transdanubia. It was not merely a borrowing of motifs but also the incorporation of the way of life, the revival of the spirit. Artists wished to acquire the "frame of mind", the "spirit" (Elek K. Lippich) of the peasantry. After 1900, the still extant handicrafts of the Kalotaszeg people and Morris' example merged in their imagination. The depth of their identification with folk art is indicated by Körösfői-Kriesch adopting the name of the Kalotaszeg village, Körösfő (in 1906) and by Wigand that of Torockó. In his articles about the art of Kalotaszeg, Körösfői-Kriesch referred to both Morris and the ancient Greeks: "Even the Greeks of antiquity would not have found this costume barbarous". Körösfői-Kriesch represented with monumental solemnity the Kalotaszeg women going to church on the painted oranament of the Székely gate designed by Pál Horti for the St. Louis World Exposition. His Women of Kalotaszeg, a wall carpet, is a unique combination of figural and ornamental representation required by the medium. In his Scandinavian gobelin Stag the stag motifs of folk art and the stag of the myth of Hungarians' origin fuse emblematically. In their first designs in applied arts, they started out by reformulating the decorative genre pieces of the last century, similarly to Vaszary. "I've turned the Hungarian man and woman, horseherd, plough, ox, the whole Hungarian genre lock, stock and barrel into ornamentation," Sándor Nagy wrote. Typical examples are the tapestries of Körösfői-Kriesch (Watering the Stock) Sándor Nagy (Ploughing

) and the latter's leather designs; Mariska Undi also took this course. Besides Kalotaszeg, Mezőkövesd also appeared in István Zíchy's, Rezső Mihály's, Sándor Nagy's genre scenes. Though remaining on this side of scientific systematicalness, Mariska Undi collected folk art motifs all her life and published a series of booklets under the title Hungarian Treasure Trove. István Zichy, whose graphic work was far more than ethnographic illustration, gave up his artistic ambitions after 1920 and became a scholar of ethnography. (One of his significant works is Pre-Settlement Prehistory and Culture of the Hungarians, Budapest, 1923.) Far removed from urbanization, the way of living and art of distant regions studied, preserved for the artists an ancient, unadulterated realm of beliefs, just as they had earlier for the masters of Pont-Aven, Paul Gauguin and Paul Sérusier. Medgyaszay's, Körösfői-Kriesch's and Rezső Mihály's renderings of villagers going to church, Sándor Nagy's carpet entitled Bible aquire their true meaning from this concept. The folklore of the Kalotaszeg Basin was endowed with a symbol-