Between the Wars

‘Calm Between the Storms’ at the Museum of the American Hungarian Foundation celebrates 50 years of preserving a heritage.

By: Aleen Crispino

"Portrait of Mrs. Geza Papp" by Jozsef Rippl-Ronai

   The young woman in the foreground of the almost life-size painting wears a white cap over dark hair, a short-sleeved white blouse and a skirt of rough, unbleached muslin, covered by a pastel pink apron. She has one bare foot placed in front of and at right angles to the other, as if in a ballet pose, except that in her hands, which reach up over her left shoulder, is a large sheaf of golden stalks of grain. The heads of the stalks hang over to form a semicircular halo over her head, drawing attention to her face, with eyes downcast as if lost in concentration or faraway thoughts.
   The painting, titled "Harvest," is by Istvan Szonyi (1894-1960), a prominent artist in Hungary during the period between the World Wars. It is the centerpiece of the exhibit Calm Between the Storms: Istvan Szonyi and Hungarian Art Between the World Wars, on view at the Museum of the American Hungarian Foundation in New Brunswick through Sept. 1.
   The period after World War I was a time when many Hungarian artists retreated from avant-garde experimentation and turned inward, focusing on pastoral themes and ways of life which they feared might be disappearing, as did so much of their land — roughly three-quarters of old Hungary was lost to neighboring Austria, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia as a result of the Treaty of Trianon in 1920.

"Harvest" by Istvan Szonyi

   Mr. Szonyi painted "Harvest" in 1938 and it was first shown to the public at the Golden Gate Exhibition in San Francisco in 1939. It was recently acquired by the Salgo Trust for Education, which provided all the art for this exhibit, and is being shown publicly for the first time since 1939.
   "If anyone was, Istvan Szonyi was the paradigmatic Hungarian artist of the interwar period," said Oliver Botar, curator of Hungarian fine art for the Salgo Trust and associate professor of art history at the University of Manitoba. "He was a very intelligent and a very talented man. As a young man before the first World War he had a keen interest in the avant-garde."

"Hillside at Badacsony" by Jozsef Egry

   Mr. Szonyi attended the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts before the war and studied with the prominent Modernist Karoly Ferenczy, founder of the Nagabanya artists’ colony in Hungary. Mr. Szonyi was also greatly influenced by Bela Uitz, a principal figure of the Hungarian avant garde, said Mr. Botar.
   "From 1918 to 1919, Hungary had a short-lived Soviet government and he (Uitz) was left-wing," said Mr. Botar. "His revolutionary subject matter included frescoes about workers and peasants. Uitz was very important for Szonyi as a model of artistic and personal integrity."
   Mr. Uitz, in turn, was "very heavily influenced by Rembrandt," said Mr. Botar, and had a "Rembrandt-inspired, avant-garde etching style." Three of Mr. Uitz’s etchings are included in the exhibit.
   Mr. Szonyi’s graphic art is represented by an album of 93 signed etchings, done in the 1920s and early ’30s, which is the other important recent acquisition of Hungarian art by the Salgo Trust. Both Messrs. Szonyi and Uitz used Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro technique of contrasting light and shadow, and both used family members as models, as did Rembrandt.
   Mr. Szonyi, while still relatively young, influenced other Hungarian artists of his generation.
   "There was a group of artists who looked to Szonyi almost as a model, despite the fact that they were similar in age. They included Vilmos Aba-Novak, Karoly Patko and Erzsebet Korb," Mr. Botar said. After his avant-garde period, Mr. Szonyi kept the modernist aspects of his work but did not go so far as to embrace abstract art, preferring figurative representation.
   "During the 1920s Cézanne was still an important stylistic model for these artists," said Mr. Botar, "as were the softer aspects of Impressionism and post-Impressionism of the Ecole-de-Paris or School of Paris."
   The exhibit has been divided into sections representing the major genres of Hungarian art of this period. In addition to graphic art, other sections depict landscapes, religion, classical mythology, Hungarian folklore, women and still life.
   The exhibit includes two landscapes depicting Mr. Szony’s home at Zebegeny in the Danube Bend area north of Budapest. The Nagabanya artist colony was lost after the Treaty of Trianon, as were Hungary’s mountains and seashore, and artists gathered to paint at the Danube Bend as well as at Lake Balaton, the largest lake in central Europe.
   "Szonyi emerged from the avant-garde but (unlike some of his contemporaries who fled the ultra-conservative government of Regent Miklos Horthy to live abroad) he decided to stay, rejected political involvement, and withdrew into a private life."
   He invited some of his artist friends to join him and his family at Zebegeny, and "it almost became a mini-artist colony," said Mr. Botar.
   The Horthy government encouraged the building of many Roman Catholic churches, and commissioned religious art to decorate them.
   One interesting painting by Pal C. Molnar, grouped in the "religion" section, is untitled but dubbed "Flight into Egypt with Italian peasant family." It depicts the diminutive figures of a man, woman and child dressed in peasant style walking under a massive, rocky arch, while, shrouded in mist and even tinier in stature on the bridge overhead, pass a man and a woman seated on a donkey.
   Much of the religious art was painted as frescoes on the walls of churches and cannot be transported for an exhibit.
   Landscapes by many artists using various different styles and palettes are represented, but all are of rural scenes.
   "For people like Szony and (Jozsef) Egry, who weren’t particularly religious, they adopted a pantheistic approach towards the relationship between humans and nature," Mr. Botar said. "The idea that we are a part of nature, not separate from it, and that if there is a God he is a part of nature."
   "Badacsony" is a landscape by Jozsef Egry, who used a palette of French blue and various shades of ochre and forest green to lay in overlapping crescents of hillside and field, dotted with terra cotta roof tops. Still post-Impressionist, Mr. Egry uses a more hard-edged, planar style than Mr. Szonyi’s "Harvest," according to Mr. Botar.
   When the Horthy government allied itself with Fascist Italy, hoping for help in regaining some of its territory, many artists were given government scholarships to study at the Collegium Hungaricum in Rome, a city long considered the center of European culture.
   There they painted Italian landscapes and also were influenced by the Novecento movement, which attempted to revive classical artistic traditions within a modern idiom, said Mr. Botar. Both Italian and classical mythological themes are represented in the exhibit, as are idealized paintings of 18th- and 19th-century Hungarian gentry and peasantry, especially those of Gyula Rudnay, an art professor who tried to forge a specifically Hungarian style, said Mr. Botar. Several of his paintings are on exhibit, with their rich, dark colors and figures in folkloric dress.
   Many of the portraits of women on exhibit were done by women, some of whom graduated from the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts. An untitled color sketch for the tapestry "Baranyos II" shows a girl with light brown hair in a simple blue peasant dress cradling a sleeping lamb. Artist Noemi Ferenczy, daughter of Karoly Ferenczy, "was one of the artists reviving the art of tapestry, but who, with her formal training as an artist, really elevated a traditional women’s medium to high art," Mr. Botar said.
   This exhibit of works from the Salgo Trust for Education is part of the American Hungarian Foundation’s 50th anniversary celebration.
   "Our mission is to preserve Hungarian culture and share it with the public," said Patricia Fazekas, museum curator. "We often work with the Salgo Trust. They do have one of the largest collections of Hungarian art outside Hungary, and this exhibit enables it to be seen by the public."
Calm Between the Storms: Istvan Szonyi and Hungarian Art Between the World Wars is on view at the Museum of the American Hungarian Foundation, 300 Somerset St., New Brunswick, through Sept. 1. Hours: Tues.-Sat. 11 a.m.-4 p.m., Sun. 1-4 p.m. Suggested donation $5. For information, call (732) 846-5777. On the Web: www.ahfoundation.org