The Hungarian National Gallery presents Rippl-Ronai – Pieces of Art from the Hands of Old Collectors an exhibition on view through 23 September, 2012.
Rippl-Rónai József Bretagne-i népünnep, 1896 itográfia
The significance of the 80.000-piece graphic collection of the Hungarian National Gallery is a little-known fact, since the paper-based objects are very sensitive and cannot be part of the permanent exhibition. That is why the paintings and sculptures of the 20th century permanent exhibition are complemented with our graphic cabinets of a changing thematic concept twice a year.
József Rippl-Rónai (1861-1927) was born 150 years ago, and this exhibition recalls his life and work. Rippl-Rónai’s abundant drawing and printmaking activity is shown at the exhibition with such pieces that came into the property of the Hungarian National Gallery through the Museum of Fine Arts which received them as a gift from both the artist and three collectors playing an important role at the early 19th century Hungarian art life: Elek Petrovics, Simon Meller and Dr. Pál Majovszky.
Rippl-Rónai arrived in Paris in 1887 and from the beginning of the 1890s he was seeking his way among the era’s modern post-impressionist artists, mainly the Symbolist and Art Nouveau painters. The “break-through” came in 1894, when he became a member of a group of artists with similar art concept, called the Nabis. The Nabis’ approach to Gesamtkunstwerk simply thrilled Rippl-Rónai who started to turn his hand seriously to graphics, lithography, posterdesigning and applied arts under their influence.
Rippl-Rónai’s colour lithographs are of trailblazer significance in the history of Hungarian graphics. Among Rippl-Rónai’s masterpieces of his Paris period are the Woman Reading by Lamplight (1894) and the Les Vierges (1895), the latter presenting the symbolic stages of women’s fate; both published in the Nabis’ favourite review, the Revue Blanche. Another masterpiece is the Fiesta in Bretagne (1896) which was published in the album of the French editor, Ambroise Vollard. Several preliminary studies, variations and pencil drawings were prepared for the four lithography stones of Les Vierges on which we see young girls walking, reading and picking apples. One of the most beautiful and known piece of these is the watercolour painting entitled Woman Walking. The theme ‘woman in a garden’ was also used for the design of a carpet to the dining-room of the palace Andrássy, the Woman with a Rose merges with the compositions prepared for the Les Vierges. Rippl-Rónai put these figures next to each other in a small-size drawing put down to a notepaper on which four slender young women in artistic pose form line in front of a fence in a closed garden. Around the end of the 1890s the artist was requested to make several Hungarian lithographs, in 1897 he designed a poster for the National Salon with a woman embroidering on it where the flower motifs are almost flowing over the embroidery frame and surrounding the figure doing needle-work. He designed the invitation card to the ball of the Club of Journalists and its envelope in 1899, and the menu card of the Exposition Universelle de Paris in 1900. He used the technical challenges of colour lithography as an artistic opportunity through different colour printings and he created series with special effects by selecting the papers used for printing.
From the middle of 1890s Rippl-Rónai was also interested in applied arts. Designing furniture and glasses, making book illustrations and designs for tapestries – many things fit into the thinking of the era about applied arts and shaping the environment, most of these Rippl-Rónai tried out, too. Designing tapestries he started with his friend, Aristide Maillol, the later famous sculptor. The tapestries were embroidered by their wives. The small drawing entitled Woman Weaving a Carpet portrayed Rippl-Rónai’s later wife, Lazarine working. His designs are many times only delicate drafts, first thoughts on the typically used striped notepapers, but sometimes detailed compositions coloured with aquarelle. Among the earliest designs are Birth and Death of Christ and Idealism and Realism which show the influence of the idealism of Symbolism. Rippl-Rónai prepared several pieces on which a carousel appears (Women at the Carousel) and he also used this motif symbolising the cycle of life as a theme for a ceramic picture (Carousel, design for a tile). Already in Hungary was the pencil design Tablet of Remembrances made in 1907 and also its finished aquarelle-coloured version which was used in 1911 as a flyleaf for the book József Rippl-Rónai’s Memoires.
A significant part of Rippl-Rónai’s graphic works contains large-scale ink drawings prepared between the 1890s and the middle of 1910s. The pieces, originally dating from the 1890s from France, he only dated later and were most probably pre-dated. In most of the pieces, in fact dating back to the middle of 1890s, the model was Lazarine Baudrion, Rippl-Rónai’s partner in Paris. On his pen drawings, sometimes coloured with aquarelle, Lazarine is dressing, lying on a bed, pedicuring, embroidering, sewing or reading with her hands under her chin. Outstanding pieces of the early pen drawings are the extremely plastic Female Nude (Marguerite Renard) and two pieces with a woman dancer on each. Some of the pen drawings were prepared in 1899 in a small Pyrenees village, Banyuls-sur-Mer where Rippl-Rónai spent three months as a guest of the sculptor Aristide Maillol. A piece of these is one of the most beautiful portraits of the artist, depicting Maillol’s wife, Clotilde in a pondering, affectionate manner. – www.mng.hu