New Szőnyi paintings enrich the museum's permanent exhibition. Eight important works are on loan from the Museum of Fine Arts - Hungarian National Gallery.
The works on loan are all of great importance. Some of them have been on display in Zebegény for years. These include the Friends, the Zebegény Evening and the Evening panels. For decades, these works adorned the walls of István Szőnyi's former home, but when the maintenance of the gallery changed years ago, the Hungarian National Gallery had them returned to its storage. Now, Zebegény and the museum have managed to recover these outstanding works. The latest of the eight panel paintings, the painting entitled Barátnők was painted by Szőnyi in 1943. It depicts Zsuzsa, his daughter, pondering over an open book, with her friend sitting opposite her, her figure only half visible at the far left. The peasant furniture of Highland origin, which is still on display in the museum, can be recognised in the painting's unique composition. It was bought here by Szőnyi's father-in-law, József Bartóky, born in Békéscsaba, after he bought the house in Zebegény in 1905 as a holiday home. The painting was returned to its rightful place in the Hungarian Room, furnished with peasant furniture. The reader's wavering depiction of Zsuzsa also appears in several Szőnyi works in the current Father and daughter temporary exhibition. The painter often portrayed his growing daughter in this way. He painted Girlfriends during the Second World War, the same year he painted his iconic Garden Bench.
The lyrical beauty of Evening, which is housed in the Great Studio, was also created using the egg tempera technique experimented with in Szőnyi's mature period and in Zebegény.
The next three paintings, Zebegény Evening, Landscape on the Danube and Self-Portrait, were made in 1928, the same year as the most successful Zebegény Funeral, which is on permanent display in the Hungarian National Gallery. In this year, Szőnyi produced many important works, and we look at these works as the end of his first period. He had been living in Zebegény with his family for four years, and was committed to the local way of life and painterly themes. The inspiration for his art came from his life in Zebegény and the things he saw and experienced here. The Danube landscape, village life, his home and family. Despite the honour of a scholarship to Rome in 1929, he could not really make use of it. His stay in Rome lasted only four months, he could not paint there, he had to return home to Zebegény to reinvigorate his art.
The self-portrait, painted in 1928, was exhibited in the small workshop that Szőnyi had used for decades. An interesting feature of the picture is the predominant presence of the colour blue. Szőnyi often portrayed himself in different ways, in different roles in his self-portraits or multi-figure paintings, here he portrayed himself as a painter, brush in hand, in keeping with his vocation. He began to use the many shades of blue in Zebegény, experimenting with how best to reproduce the air, the water, the glowing space around him. The dark, ochre tones of the past gradually lightened, and his paintings became increasingly serene and suffused with light. After a while, blue becomes almost the most expressive, the most important colour in his palette, defining himself. Self-Portrait is an example of this self-definition with blue.
oil on canvas
oil on canvas
Painted in 1927, Zsuzsa with the wooden horse depicts three-year-old Zsuzsika in bright pink against a light blue background with her toys. The composition was received with great enthusiasm by art critics of the time. Máriusz Rabinovszky wrote in the journal Nyugat: "It unfolds so freely, delicately, freshly, colour by colour, as only happy, harmonious, loving eyes can see the incomprehensible beauty of the world." It was in Zebegény that Szőnyi began to use lighter colours, as the new subjects of his painting demanded. His daughter Zsuzsa is a frequent subject in his paintings, and he documented her and her brother Peter's growth from infancy, leaving us with one of the most complete bodies of work on children.
The bridge over the valley of Zebegény, as an important motif of the place, was one of the subjects Szőnyi painted several times. In addition to the never tired view of the Danube bend, the Seven Bridges and the train passing through Zebegény are also in many of his paintings. The expressive, dramatic Viaduct, painted in 1924, is from the point of view of the stream running alongside the bridge. This is one of his early paintings of Zebegény, dated the year he moved here.
Several of the paintings on display had to be restored before they could be transported, including the Viaduct. Conservator Éva Berta gave museum staff a glimpse into the Museum of Fine Arts' super-modern conservator's workshop while working on the painting, for which we are very grateful.
The last work I have left is the monumental work of 1925, with which Szőnyi won one of the first prizes at the Nude exhibition at the Kunsthalle in the same year.
The painting "On the Mountain Roof" was painted the year after he settled in Zebegény. It is an enormous full-length self-portrait in which the artist paints himself doubled over the Danube. One figure is a nude, the other a half-dressed man in trousers and a hat, a village man. The nude is the mythological, allegorical, idealised figure of neoclassical painting, the symbol of Szőnyi's painting up to that time, while the other, dressed, with the same posture, is in the background and represents the new era of Zebegényi. According to Szőnyi himself, he found in Zebegény everything he needed to develop his art: the landscape, nature and the people who lived with it. Szőnyi built an idealised world around himself, rooted in reality, and he wanted to capture not only the Danube Bend, but also the natural, rural life and the harmony that went with it, which he thought was pure and unspoilt. The Mountain Roof is an extraordinary work. The portrayal of his own alter-egos in pairs of opposites, the nude portrait of himself, is rare and unique among self-portraits. Szőnyi's painting could have been the culmination of a lifetime's work, a summary of his artistic credo.
What is peculiar, however, is that the painting was painted less than a year after his arrival in Zebegény, as if he knew exactly that this was his final destination, that this was where he imagined his life would end and where he saw this place as an endless source of inspiration for his art. The two figures stand in the landscape above the Danube, like two marker posts, stabbed pegs marking a boundary, signalling that Szőnyi has arrived and will remain here forever. Life proved him right, Zebegény had an elemental influence on his art, and he became the painter of the Danube bend.
I recommend the renewed permanent exhibition and the temporary exhibition until the end of the year. The museum is free of charge for Zebegény residents. Everyone is welcome.
Danube Bend in Spring - New painting in the museum!
2024.
17 Jan.
On the 130th anniversary of István Szőnyi's birth, the museum's permanent exhibition was extended with a painting that, in terms of its subject matter, has been missing from the series of works presenting Szőnyi's art. A Spring Danube Bend was recently purchased by the István Szőnyi Foundation with the aim of enriching the permanent exhibition of the museum. The work, which is now in the public domain, fills a real gap, as the museum has not had a panel depicting the Danube Bend before. The painting was presented by Zsuzsa Klemmné Németh, chairwoman of the foundation's board of trustees and retired director of the museum. She said that the foundation had long wanted to buy a Szőnyi painting, but previous attempts had failed. With its lush, bright colours, the new painting represents a mature period in Szőnyi's painting, radiating the harmony and serenity that gradually became dominant in his pictures from the beginning of his time in Zebegényi.
