HOLLÓSY, Simon

Hungarian painter, one of the greatest Hungarian representatives of 19th century naturalismGLOSSARYGeneric term for scientific positions supported by natural insights. In fine arts and literature between approximately 1870 and 1900, Naturalism tried to reproduce the reality comprehended through sensory experience as realistically as possible, i.e. without idealising the object, but with scientific precision. In contrast to Realism, which was also based on the accurate description of natural occurrences, Naturalism concerns itself with the sensual dimensions of observation, whereby questions of morality and social criticism come to the fore. The spokesman for literary Naturalism was Emile Zola, who believed the artistic methods provided evidence of human existence. and realismGLOSSARYRealism (with an upper case "R"), also known as the Realist school, denotes a mid-nineteenth century art movement and style in which artists discarded the formulas of Neoclassicism and the theatrical drama of Romanticism to paint familiar scenes and events as they actually looked. Typically it involved some sort of sociopolitical or moral message, in the depiction of ugly or commonplace subjects. One of the main representatives and spokesmen was the painter Gustave Courbet. In the dispute about ways to represent reality, Realism rebelled against the idealistic and classicist tendencies in painting.. Hollósy, who came from an Armenian family in Máramarossziget, learnt to paint in Budapest and Munich where he painted Corn Husking in 1885, which brought him success in Hungary and abroad.

He criticized training at the Academy and founded a private school in 1886 where he gathered young talents around him who were interested in realistic protrayal. He opened the way to new styles by relying on his personality and by pointing out the merits of French pictures (Courbet) exhibited in Munich. He abandoned the academic style in order to follow new trends in French painting.

Encouraged by István Réti and János Thorma, his pupils and friends, he spent the summer of 1896 in Nagybánya with his school, which played an important role in Hungarian painting as the cradle of the Nagybánya school. He soon settled down in Nagybánya. With its style (sunny landscapes), his school determined Hungarian painting for decades. Leaving the Nagybánya colony in 1901, he spent the summers in Técsõ with his students from 1902. During winters he was in Munich to run his school there.

He was not productive as an artist: he was in search of atmospheres and his productivity was confined to teaching. His large scale plan of Rákóczi March with a lot of figures got as far sketches because he kept on changing his mind. The landscapes painted in Técsõ include Landscape in Técsõ, Landscape with Stacks and Sunset with Stacks, where he applied elements of plein air and ImpressionismGLOSSARYA style of painting that became prominent in the last quarter of the 19th century as a reaction to the ossified doctrine of the Academy and the content-oriented atelier, historical, and genre painting. The name is derived from the 1872 painting Impression, Sunrise by Claude Monet, and first was used by art critics as a mocking description for a group of artists excluded from the official Salon, but who had their own first group exhibition in 1874 at the salon of the Parisian photographer Nadar. Impressionism, as a new type of naturalism, negated classical pictorial methods; based on contemporary theories of physics, it indicated the natural object in a revolutionary fashion - entirely as a manifestation of colour. Their supreme principle was "plein-air" or open-air painting, through which the painters tried to capture a direct, spontaneous impression of what they saw.. His self-portrait is one of his most harrowing pictures.