IVÁNYI GRÜNWALD, Béla
(1867, Somogysom - 1940, Budapest)

Drying Clothes



1903
Oil on canvas, 166 x 133 cm
Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest

It is quite unusual in the works of artists of the Nagybánya art school that a Hungarian painter should get so close to divisionism, an end point of impressionism and its Italian branch represented by Pellizza da Volpeda and A. Morbelli. Dots of paint in the foreground and hay-stacks recall the technique of pointillism. If, however, the blue of the sky is observed which appears to be uniform from a distance, the pulsation of bluish-pink dots can be recognised there, too. The hot sunshine is vibrating in every detail of the picture. The intensive gleaming red of clothes drying in the sun shines, out of the picture owing to its mass: Iványi Grünwald's technique is fundamentally different from that of French, Italian or Belgian luminists. There is a gypsy-like temperament in opulent reflexes of saturated reds, blues, yellows, greens and whites between them, rich with reflexes of rainbows. This decorative technique, however, goes beyond glimmering impressionism. The artist returned to the subject matter once more, and its variant from 1906 turned out to be a more-to-the-point composition.

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