Rippl-Rónai on Chocolate Paper

This year, we celebrate the 150th anniversary of József Rippl-Rónai, one of the greatest Hungarian painters.

The most important figure of Hungarian post-Impressionism, József Rippl-Rónai was born in Kaposvár, SW Hungary on May 23, 1861. To mark the 150th anniversary of his birth, the artist’s home town has decided on restoring his residence Villa Roma, in addition to organizing numerous events. A New Year concert was devoted to the music of Rippl-Rónai’s era; while in February, the annual carnival scene included fancy-dress costumes recalling the master’s paintings and characteristic works. An upcoming event, the ‘Town of Painters’ festival (May 26–28) will feature an exhibition in the Vaszary Gallery of Rippl-Rónai’s works, picked from private collections. In addition, the Agora Cultural Center will host a large-scale exhibition of 150 canvasses. Meanwhile Rippl-Rónai creations can be seen throughout the year in the streets of the town – on drapes, on lamp-standards, on souvenirs and even on chocolate wrapping.

Originally preparing to be a pharmacist, Rippl-Rónai went on to pursue his studies in painting first in Munich and then in Paris, where he became an assistant to Mihály Munkácsy. In 1888 he met the members of ‘Les Nabis’ and under their influence he painted his first important piece, The Inn at Pont-Aven, a deeply-felt work notable for its dark atmosphere. He was also a regular at the studios of Gauguin and Cezanne. In 1892, in order to pursue an independent artistic career, he left Paris and after a short detour returned to Hungary. The Hungarian public first saw his works in an open show in 1900, (by which time he had already been fully acknowledged as an artist in Paris). He was one of the founders of the Circle of Hungarian Impressionists and Naturalists. He participated in the activities of the Nyugat journal, and contemporary critics praised highly him. On his 14-acre estate he cultivated vines and kept a cow, a horse, a donkey, a dog, a peacock, poultry, bees and sheep. His friends, including poets and novelists, sculptors and painters, spent summers there on a regular basis and many of them left their signatures there in some way or another: a sketch on the garden table or on the wall, a sculpture in the garden, still there for those who want to admire the cultural era of Kaposvár’s famous son.

Rippl-Rónai believed that for an artist not only is his body of work significant, but also his general modus vivendi, including his clothes. He thus became interested in design, which led to commissions such as the dining room and the entire furnishings of the Andrássy palace, and a stained-glass window in the Ernst Museum, (both in Budapest). His exhibitions in Frankfurt, Munich and Vienna experienced great success in 1911-1913. Today, in addition to the Budapest’s Hungarian National Gallery, Rippl-Rónai’s masterpieces are on display in several institutions worldwide, including Musée d'Orsay, Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. At Christie’s, one of his paintings entitled ‘Femme elegante assise dans le Jardin pres du Lac Balaton’ is currently on sale for USD 53,516. An important resource for an appreciation of his life is his autobiography, along with the memoirs of his adopted daughter, and the estate of his younger brother, Ödön who also was an artist.

Gigapixel images

Commissioned by Budapest’s Nemzeti Galéria, the first gigapixel images depicting the work of Hungarian artists Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka, Viktor Madarász and József Rippl-Rónai, were created recently. The images are made up of thousands of individual photographs, revealing each brush stroke and even those minute surface cracks are clearly distinguishable -much to the delight of art historians.