Csok, Istvan (1865-1961) - 1890 Holy Communion (Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest)
Oil on canvas; 136.5 x 111 cm.
István Csók, of Methuselah-like longevity, belonged to the generation of Hungarian artists who were now studying in their own country, at the Budapest College of Decorative Arts. The child of a well-to-do miller's family, he was a young man leading the carefree life of the Bohemian art student when he came up against the incomprehension surrounding Pál Szinyei Merse's return at the beginning of the 1880s. Since the vivid and exciting colouring of the near-Impressionistic style of the painter of Picnic in May was decidedly to his liking, he left the institution and went to Munich. At Simon Hollósy's private school he came into contact with the spirit of the new movement that was getting under way - naturalism. The products of his first period belong under that heading. He went to stay in Paris and then, after getting married, settled there from 1903 onwards: that was when he painted the pictures that teem with ever richer colours. After 1910, when he had returned to Hungary, his oeuvre took a new direction: the pictures he painted of his family and surroundings celebrate the joys of a balanced middle-class life. His art, which glorifies beauty, was increasingly revered; from 1920 he was the president of the Szinyei Society and between 1923 and 1933 he was a liberal-minded professor at the Academy of Fine Art. His portraits, nudes and still-lifes recall the mature Renoir, both in their cheerful colours and in their swirling brushstrokes. He contemplated the world with wise understanding, and was thus pensioned off by the conservative regime, but placed on a pedestal after 1945 by the new order; he was twice awarded the Kossuth Prize in the last period of his life.
Csok, Istvan (1865-1961) - 1890 Holy Communion (Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest)
Oil on canvas; 136.5 x 111 cm.
István Csók, of Methuselah-like longevity, belonged to the generation of Hungarian artists who were now studying in their own country, at the Budapest College of Decorative Arts. The child of a well-to-do miller's family, he was a young man leading the carefree life of the Bohemian art student when he came up against the incomprehension surrounding Pál Szinyei Merse's return at the beginning of the 1880s. Since the vivid and exciting colouring of the near-Impressionistic style of the painter of Picnic in May was decidedly to his liking, he left the institution and went to Munich. At Simon Hollósy's private school he came into contact with the spirit of the new movement that was getting under way - naturalism. The products of his first period belong under that heading. He went to stay in Paris and then, after getting married, settled there from 1903 onwards: that was when he painted the pictures that teem with ever richer colours. After 1910, when he had returned to Hungary, his oeuvre took a new direction: the pictures he painted of his family and surroundings celebrate the joys of a balanced middle-class life. His art, which glorifies beauty, was increasingly revered; from 1920 he was the president of the Szinyei Society and between 1923 and 1933 he was a liberal-minded professor at the Academy of Fine Art. His portraits, nudes and still-lifes recall the mature Renoir, both in their cheerful colours and in their swirling brushstrokes. He contemplated the world with wise understanding, and was thus pensioned off by the conservative regime, but placed on a pedestal after 1945 by the new order; he was twice awarded the Kossuth Prize in the last period of his life.