Béla Iványi-Grünwald
Encyclopedia
Béla Iványi-Grünwald was a Hungarian
painter, a leading member of the Nagybánya artists' colony and founder of the Kecskemét artists' colony.
, Iványi-Grünwald began his artistic studies under Bertalan Székely
and Károly Lotz
at the Academy of Fine Arts
in Budapest
(1882–86) and continued them at Munich
in 1886-87 and at the Académie Julian
in Paris
from 1887 to 1890. From 1891 he again worked in Munich; in 1894 he travelled with Ferenc Eisenhut to Egypt
, where he painted several oriental-themed works. Beginning in 1889 he had regular exhibitions at the Palace of Art
in Budapest. Characteristic of his early pictures is A Hadúr kardja ("The Warrior's Sword", 1890), a proto-Symbolist
treatment of rural genre showing the influence of Jules Bastien-Lepage
. After his return to Munich, Iványi-Grünwald painted a large-scale genre painting entitled Nihilisták sorsot húznak ("Nihilists Drawing Lots", 1893), a work as notable for its dramatic use of chiaroscuro as for its deeply felt subject-matter. In response to a state commission for the 1896 Millennium Exhibition in Budapest he produced an enormous academic history painting, Béla király visszatérése a tatárjárás után ("King Béla IV's Return following the Invasion Suffered at the Hands of the Tartars").
In 1896, together with Simon Hollósy
and his circle (whom he had known at Hollósy's anti-academic painting school in Munich), Iványi-Grünwald arrived at Nagybánya (from 1918 Baia Mare
, Romania
) in order to concentrate on plein-air
landscape painting; there, he became an important member of the Nagybánya artists' colony. Two years later he married Irén Bilcz, the daughter of a Greek Catholic
priest, and settled in the city. After Hollósy's departure in 1901 he became one of the professors at the free painting academy there. At the Budapest National Salon in 1909 he won great acclaim for his paintings in a new style (Secessionism), which gained him the support he asked from the mayor of the small town of Kecskemét
, who asked him to set up an artists' colony. Thus from 1911-18 he led and worked at the Kecskemét artists' colony. After 1920 he lived in Pest, painting near Lake Balaton
in summer. That year he was among the founders of the Szinyei Merse Pál Society. He received a number of important commissions, for instance painting a monumental canvas for the University of Debrecen Library. From 1928 he was president of the Szentendre Painters' Association. Along the years he had regular exhibitions in Budapest
and displayed his paintings at the Fränkel Salon a number of times. He died in Budapest in 1940.
. In 1906 he held an exhibition of his works in the Ernst Museum in Budapest, and this event effectively announced the end of his Nagybánya period, although he remained there a few more years.
A gradual change was brought about in Iványi-Grünwald's work by the influence of younger Hungarian painters returning from Paris and working in the style of the Fauves
. More direct inspiration was provided by the exhibition of modern French Impressionist
and Post-Impressionist
painting held in Budapest in 1907; his paintings became more decorative and stylised, his outlines bolder, and his compositions based on flat shapes, as in Nagybányai táj a Gutinnal ("View of Nagybánya with the River Gutin", 1906–08). Decorative principles already dominated in the large panel of 1909 for the Révai Villa in Budapest, Tavasz ("Spring"), and Paul Gauguin
in particular exerted an influence on his art (Római villa — "Villa in Rome", 1905; Cigánylányok a Lápos partján — "Gypsy Girls by the Banks of the Lápos
", 1909). The major work of his Kecskemét phase is Kecskeméti piac télen ("Market of Kecskemét in Winter", 1912), of which he painted a number of versions. In style these scenes recalled Gauguin's Brittany
paintings, with boldly outlined planes of deep colour. He was also able to paint monumental frescoes at the time (Fürdés után — "After Bathing", ca. 1914). After the mid-1910s his innovative period came to an end and he executed bucolic scenes and a series of pretty landscapes, for the most part vigorously painted and impressionistic in effect (Oxen on the Shore of Lake Balaton, 1920; the realistic Tájkép gémeskúttal — "Sweep-Pole Well", 1924; Balaton, 1936). In his last years, he painted pictures with movement typical of Baroque
, then simple and realistic ones; his still life
s and pictures of Gypsies from this period were less significant.
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
painter, a leading member of the Nagybánya artists' colony and founder of the Kecskemét artists' colony.
Life
Born in SomSom, Hungary
- External links :*...
, Iványi-Grünwald began his artistic studies under Bertalan Székely
Bertalan Székely
Bertalan Székely was a Hungarian Romantic painter of historical themes. "The Discovery of Louis II's Dead Body", "Women of Eger", "Battle of Mohács", "Ladislas V" are among the most important of his historical paintings. Szekely is also known for his many murals.-External links:* *...
and Károly Lotz
Károly Lotz
Lotz Károly Antal Pál, or Karl Anton Paul Lotz was a German-Hungarian painter.- Career :Karl Lotz was born in Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, Germany, the 7th and youngest surviving child of Wilhelm Christian Lotz and Antonia Höfflick ...
at the Academy of Fine Arts
University of Fine Arts Budapest
The Hungarian University of Fine Arts is the central Hungarian art school in Budapest, Andrássy Avenue...
in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
(1882–86) and continued them at Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
in 1886-87 and at the Académie Julian
Académie Julian
The Académie Julian was an art school in Paris, France.Rodolphe Julian established the Académie Julian in 1868 at the Passage des Panoramas, as a private studio school for art students. The Académie Julian not only prepared students to the exams at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, but offered...
in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
from 1887 to 1890. From 1891 he again worked in Munich; in 1894 he travelled with Ferenc Eisenhut to Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, where he painted several oriental-themed works. Beginning in 1889 he had regular exhibitions at the Palace of Art
Palace of Art (Budapest)
*Kunsthalle Budapest is a contemporary art museum in Budapest. The building, built in 1895, is located in Heroes' Square, facing the Museum of Fine Arts....
in Budapest. Characteristic of his early pictures is A Hadúr kardja ("The Warrior's Sword", 1890), a proto-Symbolist
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
treatment of rural genre showing the influence of Jules Bastien-Lepage
Jules Bastien-Lepage
Jules Bastien-Lepage , was a French naturalist painter, a style related to the Realist movement.-Life and work:...
. After his return to Munich, Iványi-Grünwald painted a large-scale genre painting entitled Nihilisták sorsot húznak ("Nihilists Drawing Lots", 1893), a work as notable for its dramatic use of chiaroscuro as for its deeply felt subject-matter. In response to a state commission for the 1896 Millennium Exhibition in Budapest he produced an enormous academic history painting, Béla király visszatérése a tatárjárás után ("King Béla IV's Return following the Invasion Suffered at the Hands of the Tartars").
In 1896, together with Simon Hollósy
Simon Hollósy
Simon Hollósy ; was a Hungarian painter. He was considered one of the greatest Hungarian representatives of 19th century Naturalism and Realism. Hollósy was not productive as an artist: he was in search of atmospheres and his productivity was confined to teaching...
and his circle (whom he had known at Hollósy's anti-academic painting school in Munich), Iványi-Grünwald arrived at Nagybánya (from 1918 Baia Mare
Baia Mare
Baia Mare is a municipality in northwestern Romania and the capital of Maramureş County. The city is situated about 600 kilometres from Bucharest, the capital of Romania, 70 kilometres from the border with Hungary and 50 kilometres from the border with Ukraine...
, Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
) in order to concentrate on plein-air
En plein air
En plein air is a French expression which means "in the open air", and is particularly used to describe the act of painting outdoors.Artists have long painted outdoors, but in the mid-19th century working in natural light became particularly important to the Barbizon school and Impressionism...
landscape painting; there, he became an important member of the Nagybánya artists' colony. Two years later he married Irén Bilcz, the daughter of a Greek Catholic
Hungarian Greek Catholic Church
The Hungarian Greek Catholic Church is a Byzantine Rite sui juris particular Church in full union with the Catholic Church that uses Hungarian in the liturgy.-History:...
priest, and settled in the city. After Hollósy's departure in 1901 he became one of the professors at the free painting academy there. At the Budapest National Salon in 1909 he won great acclaim for his paintings in a new style (Secessionism), which gained him the support he asked from the mayor of the small town of Kecskemét
Kecskemét
Kecskemét is a city in the central part of Hungary. It is the 8th largest city of the country, and the county seat of Bács-Kiskun.Kecskemét lies halfway between the capital Budapest and the country's third-largest city, Szeged, 86 kilometres from both of them and almost equal distance from the two...
, who asked him to set up an artists' colony. Thus from 1911-18 he led and worked at the Kecskemét artists' colony. After 1920 he lived in Pest, painting near Lake Balaton
Lake Balaton
Lake Balaton is a freshwater lake in the Transdanubian region of Hungary. It is the largest lake in Central Europe, and one of its foremost tourist destinations. As Hungary is landlocked , Lake Balaton is often affectionately called the "Hungarian Sea"...
in summer. That year he was among the founders of the Szinyei Merse Pál Society. He received a number of important commissions, for instance painting a monumental canvas for the University of Debrecen Library. From 1928 he was president of the Szentendre Painters' Association. Along the years he had regular exhibitions in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
and displayed his paintings at the Fränkel Salon a number of times. He died in Budapest in 1940.
Style
Iványi-Grünwald was keenly aware of the various currents of modernism that developed during his career. At first he was influenced by French naturalism (Ave Maria, 1891; Juhász és parasztasszony — "Shepherd and Peasant Woman", 1892). At Nagybánya, undoubtedly the most accomplished phase of his career, he focused on plein air and costume scenes (Holdkelte — "Moonrise", 1897; Bércek között — "Between Crags", 1901; Itatás — "Watering", 1902; Háromkirályok — "The Three Magi", 1903; Ruhaszárítás — "Drying Clothes", 1903). By this time his work had distanced itself from the influence of Bastien-Lepage to concentrate on the changing effects of atmosphere. He emphasized, for example, the mood produced by light at various times of the day and night, as in Evening by the Cattle Pen (1896), and used extremely bright colours, not entirely typical of the Nagybánya school as a whole, as with the brilliant greens of A völgyben ("In the Valley", ca. 1901). His subjects were taken from his immediate surroundings and the human figure is shown as an integral part of the landscape. Iványi-Grünwald also taught in Hollósy's Nagybánya school until he took up an award in 1905 that enabled him to spend a year in RomeRome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. In 1906 he held an exhibition of his works in the Ernst Museum in Budapest, and this event effectively announced the end of his Nagybánya period, although he remained there a few more years.
A gradual change was brought about in Iványi-Grünwald's work by the influence of younger Hungarian painters returning from Paris and working in the style of the Fauves
Fauvism
Fauvism is the style of les Fauves , a short-lived and loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism...
. More direct inspiration was provided by the exhibition of modern French Impressionist
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
and Post-Impressionist
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...
painting held in Budapest in 1907; his paintings became more decorative and stylised, his outlines bolder, and his compositions based on flat shapes, as in Nagybányai táj a Gutinnal ("View of Nagybánya with the River Gutin", 1906–08). Decorative principles already dominated in the large panel of 1909 for the Révai Villa in Budapest, Tavasz ("Spring"), and Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...
in particular exerted an influence on his art (Római villa — "Villa in Rome", 1905; Cigánylányok a Lápos partján — "Gypsy Girls by the Banks of the Lápos
Lapus River
The Lăpuș River is a tributary of the Someș River in Romania.It is formed at the junction of the headwaters Izvorul Alb and Izvorul Negru.-References:* Administrația Națională a Apelor Române — Cadastrul Apelor — București...
", 1909). The major work of his Kecskemét phase is Kecskeméti piac télen ("Market of Kecskemét in Winter", 1912), of which he painted a number of versions. In style these scenes recalled Gauguin's Brittany
Brittany
Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...
paintings, with boldly outlined planes of deep colour. He was also able to paint monumental frescoes at the time (Fürdés után — "After Bathing", ca. 1914). After the mid-1910s his innovative period came to an end and he executed bucolic scenes and a series of pretty landscapes, for the most part vigorously painted and impressionistic in effect (Oxen on the Shore of Lake Balaton, 1920; the realistic Tájkép gémeskúttal — "Sweep-Pole Well", 1924; Balaton, 1936). In his last years, he painted pictures with movement typical of Baroque
Baroque art
Baroque painting is the painting associated with the Baroque cultural movement. The movement is often identified with Absolutism, the Counter Reformation and Catholic Revival, but the existence of important Baroque art and architecture in non-absolutist and Protestant states throughout Western...
, then simple and realistic ones; his still life
Still life
A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural or man-made...
s and pictures of Gypsies from this period were less significant.