HOLLÓSY, Simon

In 1896, an artists’ colony was established in hilly eastern Hungary at Nagyb�nya (now Baia Mare in Rumania). The Nagyb�nya painters grouped about the initiator of the colony, Simon Holl�sy. They worked in a variety of styles, from an almost transcendent realism à la Bastien-Lepage to a Symbolist form of Art Nouveau, although always retaining an overriding interest in the homeland and its people.

Holl�sy’s works depict village life. Action becomes reality here: time may pass but the happiness or sadness of figures is still alive because the picture depicts true feelings. Leaves of corn are rustling under the young man’s feet. The eyes of the girl are attracting the young man but she is hesitating at the same time. Her eyes and the graceful way she is holding her hands suggest the eternal Eve. The white arm pressed by the young man reflect a healthy and fiery moment in their lives.

Nostalgia makes Holl�sy’s genre pictures on Hungarian village life convincing. Holl�sy, who played the violoncello very well, managed to express the musical qualities of painting by using lively colours and applying inventions of plein air in closed spaces, i.e. light filtering in from outside.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 3 minutes):

Johannes Brahms: Hungarian Dance No 5

Holl�sy’s “Self-Portrait” is one of the most upsetting pictures of Hungarian painting. The artist, who experienced a lot of disappointments and who is still optimistic, is examining himself. He portrays himself with great simplicity, with colours and forms vaguely defined, as an integrated part of his surroundings. A man approaching his final day, who has reconciled with his fate is looking into the eyes of the spectator to show what has become of his art. He is miles away from naturalistic details such as the glitters of surfaces bathing in the sunshine or dust stirred up do not belong to his art: his portrait is the manifestation of realism.

Holl�sy painted the first sketch for “R�k�czi March” in the autumn of 1885 and kept returning to the composition but he never got to a solution which he thought would match his concept. Only few of his sketches survived and demonstrate the artist’s efforts, the most interesting of them is a study from the year 1899. The illustration painted for “Fires”, a poem by J�zsef Kiss, served as a predecessor to the picture both in content and form, where Holl�sy portrayed the revolutionary enthusiasm in people pushing forwards desperately. People are pushing forwards as if they were waves while the march is being played and people cannot be held up. Dust is stirred up as people are marching, light becomes scattered - as a result, there are no forms and contours, there are decorative patches, and the scene becomes visionary.

“This is not a historical picture in the traditional sense, although one might call it that, since it condenses the truest conflict of its time. Holl�sy wanted to express the greatest ambition of the suppressed Hungarian people. His figures were borrowed from his time. The ineradicable experience of the war of independence is included in this picture, but the revolts of the 1890s are also anticipated, thus Holl�sy goes beyond class barriers of his contemporaries”. (Lajos N�meth)

In 1566, in the Battle of Szigetv�r a vastly outnumbered Croatian-Hungarian army tried to resist a Turkish invasion. The battle concluded when Captain Mikl�s Zr�nyi’s forces, having been greatly depleted, left the fortress walls in a famous onslaught. Approximately four hundred troops forayed into the Turkish camp. Zr�nyi killed Sultan Suleiman I, before being gunned down by janissaries.