Exhibit showcases the works of Hungarian artists
Acursory glance at “Hungarian Masterworks” reveals shades of Cézanne, Vuillard and a bouquet of European masters in a dizzying array of color and form.
Every significant 20th century art movement is here, from the broad brush strokes of post-Impressionism to the strident color of the German Expressionists. But if the styles seem familiar, the artist’s names are obscure.
“Hungarian Masterworks: From Impressionism to Modernism” aims to illuminate these artists from the historical shadows. The show mirrors the cream of the European avant garde through more than 60 paintings, drawings and prints from 1890 to 1956. The exhibition opens at the Charlotte Jackson Project Space today.
Denver lawyer H. Kirk Brown and his wife Jill Wiltse have been collecting Hungarian art since the early 1990s. In 2006, he loaned a selection to the newly reopened Denver Art Museum.
“It started with a book,” Brown said in a telephone interview from his Denver office.
In the early 1990s, Brown stopped at the Santa Barbara Art Museum book store during a visit to Los Angeles. He discovered “Standing in the Tempest: The Hungarian Avant Garde, 1908-1930” by Steven Mansbach, (1991, MIT Press) now a Uni- versity of Maryland art history professor. The lavishly illustrated book cataloged the exhibit that jump-started American interest in this virtually unknown art.
“My reaction was, ’Wow, this art is fantastic,’ ’’ Brown said. “But I’ve never heard of any of these people. I thought, ’Geez, has the commercial art world forgotten Hungary?’ ’’
That cultural amnesia stems largely from Hungary’s tumultuous history of monarchy, right-wing dictatorships and communism. By the end of World War II, much of the work was shuttered under 50 years of isolation.
“It went into a deep freeze,” Brown said. “Objects had no value, so they put things in the basement.”
That started changing with the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. Brown first visited Hungary in 1997.
“We began to see pieces that just made your mouth water,” he said. “Many of (the artists) either were trained in Munich or Paris but returned to Hungary and died in Hungary. They never came into view in their mature stage in western Europe.”
And unlike their French and German counterparts, they weren’t discouraged from experimenting outside a given style, Mansbach said.
“It was seen as a part of an artist’s artistic integrity,” he explained. “They were in contact with all the (well-known) artists,” And they all read languages. People in Budapest knew exactly what was happening in Paris and Berlin and even Prague.”
“At their best, they’re fully the equal” of their famous colleagues,” Mansbach added. “That’s what makes it so extraordinary.”
New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and Yale University have all begun buying Hungarian art, Mansbach said. Prices have risen accordingly, although the work is still relatively affordable when compared with the artists’ western European contemporaries. While a piece by the German expressionist Emil Nolde might sell for as much as $14 million, a comparable Hungarian work would cost about $1.5 million, Mansbach said.
Brown’s first piece was a small print by József Rippl-Rónai, who had lived in Paris as part of the Nabis painter’s group (the name means “the prophets” in Hebrew) of Gauguin acolytes that included Pierre Bonnard and Maurice Denis. Rippl-Rónai was known for his post-Impressionist compositional experiments like “Blue Vase with Yellow Tulips” (1897).
“He gets the lightness of touch,” said Mansbach, who will talk about the works from 2-3 p.m. Saturday. “There’s a groundedness of composition almost architecturally.”
Rippl-Rónai would later develop his characteristic “corn kernels” style, using bright colors and small brush strokes, leaving distinctive yet tiny mosaics of paint, as in his 1912 oil “Circus at Kaposvár.”
Brown snared Géza Bornemisza’s “Village Street” (1911) from a Hungarian art dealer through the help of the late István Rozsics, a friend from Budapest who was involved in nearly all of his Hungarian art purchases. First, Brown hired professionals from Denver’s Western Center for the Conservation of Fine Arts to scrub 90-plus years of grime from the painting’s surface.
“This painting was black,” he said. “Now it has highlights of purples and reds. That was very much the color scheme of the German Expressionists.”
Béla Iványi-Grunwald’s “Park in Kecskemét” (ca. 1903), with its circular flower bed and looming hedges, depicts a bucolic site south of Budapest. The rich, saturated colors are reminiscent of Monet. Iványi-Grunwald grew up in an artist’s colony. He renounced his Hungarian citizenship and a scholarship at Budapest University to live in Britain after the outbreak of World War II.
Béla Kádár’s “Visit of the Shepherds” (1925) melds movements and styles ranging from the whimsy of Chagall to shades of cubism, futurism and constructivism.
“Kádár is one of those people that doesn’t fit any category,” Mansbach said. “He took folk imagery and the decorative arts seriously. So he makes modernism rooted in the folklore tradition.”
At first glance, János Mattis-Teutsch’s oil on paper board “May 19” (1919) screams Kandinsky. Hailed by modernist critics, in 1924, his works were exhibited in Bucharest alongside those of Kurt Schwitters, Paul Klee and Constantin Brancusi. He later returned to figurative work, which he fused with his socialist beliefs.
“Abstraction was very much a part of the modern impulse in Hungary,” Mansbach said. “It had to be tied to a way of seeing and behaving. They looked everywhere — they were in contact with Kandinsky. They were the first to introduce Russian constructivism to Europe.”
Lili Ország’s 1950s collages pay tribute to both surrealism and realism, but on the artist’s terms. The Jewish artist barely escaped the Holocaust. She responded to the tragedy with bold, dream-like imagery. Imprisoned in a brick factory in the Ukraine, she hid in Budapest after false documents saved her from deportation to Auschwitz. The symbols of imprisonment, forbidding walls figure heavily in her work.
With no children to name as heirs, the Browns haven’t decided what to do with the artwork — whether to sell it back to Hungary or give it to a museum. For now, they loan the works out to educate the public.
“I think there deserves to be a major exhibition of Hungarian art in a major city — like the Art Institute of Chicago or the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” Brown said. “I think it’s merely a matter of time.”
If You Go
WHAT: “Hungarian Masterworks: From Impressionism to Modernism”
WHEN: Opening reception 5-7 p.m. tonight; lecture and overview 2-3 p.m. Saturday, April 5.
WHERE: Charlotte Jackson Project Space, 7511 Mallard Way
CONTACT: 989-8688 or www.charlottejackson.com/Project_Space.htm
