Gyula Benczúr and His Contemporaries

Painting as Theatre – A Visual Staging

At the present exhibition, 19th century Hungarian painting is seen from a new and interesting angle. Instead of focusing on themes, genres or painters, attention is drawn here to a technical component of artistic creation, one that is rarely analized – the „staging” of thematic elements within a picture. While composition is an abstract notion, staging means the concrete choice of the most appropriate motifs, accessories and models, as well as the elaboration of detail studies and their final assembling.

            The golden age of Hungarian painters as stage directors was evidently the 19th century. Academism required the choice of subjects that transcended themselves and their clear development, performed at the highest level of technical perfection, which, of course, made very particular and complex demands on artists. The very choice of a good and appropriate subject was a task no less challenging or exciting than its artistic elaboration.

            The most challenging subjects were obviously offered by history, as historically themed painting demanded authentic choices of objects, properties and places, thus requiring not only well grounded technical knowledge but also serious preparation. Gyula Benczúr (1844-1920), undoubtedly the greatest representative of Hungarian pictorial academism, made always sure he had become largely familiar with the literature of a given period he intended to evoke in a historcal composition. As a good stage director, he depicted everything he believed necessary to recall, to revive that particular period. While indisputably the most outstanding master of 19th century scenic painting, Benczur had several contemporaries who were great artists of pictorial staging as well.

            To look at painting as an act of staging continues to be possible, in a certain sense, in 20th century art. The subject, however, the choice and elaboration of which would most require an active stage director’s attitude, has already lost its importance in the majority of modern art trends.