Aniko Katona Hungarian Art Deco Posters

HUNGARIAN ART DECO POSTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Art Deco is a relatively new term in Hungarian art history. Le Corbusier was
the first to use the expression, but not as a definition of a style or an “-ism”. As
part of art historical terminology, it was first used in 1966 by the curators of a
ground-breaking Paris exhibition of the year (and art) of 1925. The first notable
appearance of the term in Hungary was at a 1985 exhibition on applied arts in
the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts that had “Art Deco” in its title. Since the
political transition of the Nineties, interest in Art Deco design and Art Deco poster
art has grown. In 2009, following an initiative by a Spanish museum (MuVim
Valencia), the curator Katalin Bakos put together an exhibition – presented in
Budapest in 2014 too – of modern Hungarian posters between 1924 and 1942.
In 2012 the Museum of Applied Arts staged an exhibition titled “Art Deco and
Modernism” that focused on interior design between 1920 and 1940. The creators
had intended to also present posters, but finally only a study on Art Deco graphic
design written by Bakos that focused on magazine illustrations, covers and posters
was included in the catalogue.
Describing particular posters as Art Deco or not has long stirred rigorous debate,
one which I will decline from entering into in this paper in favour of merely
showing how Art Deco tastes and approaches can be detected in the visual culture
and graphic design of interwar Hungary.
Art Deco cannot be defined as a style, or an “-ism” because it does not have
a clear ideological background as most -isms do, and the boundaries of the
category seem to be elastic. However, many phenomena of Art Deco visual
culture (in terms of graphic design that incorporates magazine covers,
illustrations, packaging, posters, etc.) can comfortably be described as such.
In short, Art Deco is a matter of public taste that appears in everyday visual
culture. It was a style appreciated by certain social groups, the middle class, the
so-called gentry and the upwardly mobile lower classes, or more precisely, the
“wannabe”-gentry.
HUNGARIAN ART DECO POSTERS
Anikó Katona
017 xxx-xxx Posters SL PM SL X 4.indd 1
017 xxx-xxx Posters SL PM SL X 4.indd 1 2018. 07. 13. 14:12:37
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2 HUNGARIAN REVIEW | July 2018
A look at the social background
to Hungarian Art Deco posters
necessitates a consideration of the
historical context in which they
were produced. The interwar era
in Hungary was overshadowed by
the national traumas of the loss of
hundreds of thousands of human
lives during the First World War,
and the Trianon Peace Treaty of
1920 that followed in its wake.
The Trianon Peace Treaty had
severed two thirds of the country’s
former territory. The remaining area
required a smaller bureaucracy that
meant fewer jobs for the middle-
class and gentry. The first after-War
period, between 1921 and 1931 is
commonly called as the “Bethlen
consolidation”, after Prime Minister
IstvánBethlen.In1924hemanaged
to head up an economic recovery,
partly with the help of a League of
Nations loan that brought a degree
of stabilisation and prosperity, but
at the cost of indebting the country.
The relative prosperity brought an
upswing in tourism and industrial and
technological progress, spearheaded
by the success of companies like
electro-technical giants Tungsram and Orion, which commissioned a wealth of
posters. The global economic crisis that reached Hungary between 1929 and 1933
was exacerbated by the country’s high debt level.
Periods of recession and depression often produce dream-like and glamorous art
that enables people to look beyond their difficult circumstances. This was also
a key feature of Hungarian Art Deco, and especially its posters, and is also why
the period became a golden age of cinema: an art whose essence comprises desire,
glamour and dreams. Lifestyles and living spaces of never-before seen luxury, stars
of shimmering beauty and fairytale-like plots and stories were put on screens
by the Hungarian film industry during the interwar period. While film posters
Baker.PosterbyTiborRéz-Diamant.©Hungart
2018. © Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
2018. 07. 13. 14:12:39

were a key part of popular culture at
the time, posters displaying fashion
and commercial advertisements also
emerged as art forms where everyday
life met a public demand to look at
luxury and beauty.
TRENDS IN HUNGARIAN
POSTER ART
Hungarian poster art is usually
considered as originating from the
first large-scale coloured poster
designed by the academic painter
Gyula Benczúr for the General
Exhibition of 1885. The turn of the
centuryproducedsomehighlyartistic
posters, by some of the greatest ever
Hungarian painters (such as Rippl-
Rónai, Vaszary, Ferenczy, etc.), their
work being also influenced by post-
Impressionism, Japonisme and Art
Nouveau.
The first golden age of Hungarian
poster art however arrived with Art Nouveau, also called the Hungarian “Secession”
around 1900–1910. Due to the nearby Austrian capital the cultural and artistic
influence of Vienna prevailed until the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in
1918. But the Vienna Secession was not the sole influence in Hungarian Art Nouveau
poster design. The early 1910s saw the appearance of the first Hungarian artist
groups seen as avant-garde, namely the group called “The Eight”. These painters
were inspired by Cézanne and the newest modern trends, such as Fauvism, Cubism
and Expressionism. The French influence was also evident in the work of Géza
Faragó. He was a student and colleague of Mucha, and created a series of decorative
posters for bars, clubs, revues, and also for commercial companies. Besides the French
influence, a German line also appeared, for example in the work of Márton Tuszkay,
who – after a study tour that included Berlin – became a Hungarian representative
of the German “Sachplakat”. One of the most famous masters of this era was Mihály
Bíró, known as the father of the political poster genre. Bíró had spent time in the Arts
& Crafts workshop of Charles Robert Ashbee, which came through in the discernible
English influence in his oeuvre.
Budapest City of Spas, 1935. Poster by György
Konecsni. © Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
2018. 07. 13. 14:12:46

MODERNISM
A second wave of avant-garde that
began after the First World War had
a profound impact on Hungarian
graphic design. A special Hungarian
version of Constructivism emerged
as a dominant trend in Hungarian
graphic design during the interwar
period. The most important painters
and designers of the time were
involved in a mission to produce “new
art”/“new graphics” which was a
guarantee for high artistic standards.
The “new design and the new
typography” first appeared around
1925–1926, and flourished until the
end of the 1940s, but its effect was
felt long afterwards as well. While
avantgarde art is usually considered
as a parallel artistic phenomenon to
Art Deco, the two strands sometimes
seem interwoven.
In 1919, after the fall of the
Hungarian Soviet Republic, many
modernist artists had to emigrate.
Most gravitated to Western Europe’s
artistic centres of the time, such as
Berlin, Weimar or Vienna, as nearly
all of them had been at least in part
inspired by the German Bauhaus design and/or Russian Constructivism. In 1925,
as evidence of the political consolidation of the Horthy regime, an amnesty was
proclaimed, and many of the émigré artists were able to return home. However,
for artists who had fallen out of the art scene and the art market it was difficult
to find buyers, which forced some to turn to commercial design to make a living.
Nonetheless, for Sándor Bortnyik and Róbert Berény, two major personalities
who believed in the importance of design, creating posters was not just a way to
earn money. Lajos Kassák, the major art theorist, artist, writer and organiser of
the Hungarian avant-garde, and publisher of a famous article in his journal MA
(Today), titled “The Poster and the New Painting”, was of a similar view. For the
Countess Maritza. Poster by Tibor Réz-Diamant.
© Hungart 2018. © National Széchenyi
Library, Budapest
2018. 07. 13. 14:12:57

Constructivist artists the poster
was a tool of communication,
and its aesthetics were defined
by this function; the good poster
had to be concrete, functional,
and clean and pure in its design
– this was something that the
painter had to learn, according
to Kassák’s theory. His journal
embodied modernist graphic
design and the issues’ covers
themselves should be seen as
Constructivist artworks. MA
appeared from 1916 with an Art
Nouveau-Expressionist logo and
design,butwhenitwaspublished
in Vienna during Kassák’s years
of emigration (1919–1925), the
outlook radically turned in a
Constructivist direction.
Kassák himself designed the first
modern poster for the newspaper
Magyar Hírlap in 1924; then
Bortnyik, who spent his years in
exile in Weimar began to create
modern posters for the famous
Modiano rolling paper brand in 1926. The new graphic design style of Berény and
Bortnyik soon became a successful trend, and dominated the years between 1926
and 1930. However, some of these works seem to have a decorative characteristic
as well, such as Berény’s most famous work, the Modiano poster of 1929.
After 1930, the style of Berény and Bortnyik moved towards Art Deco and became
more decorative and Bauhaus-inspired. However, the modernist trend was kept
alive by younger artists such as Tihamér Csemiczky and István Irsai. Csemiczky
was most likely Bortnyik’s student at his “Hungarian Bauhaus” art school called
the “Workshop”. He followed modernist principles more or less consistently, and
was the major designer of the Tungsram electronics trademark (light bulbs, radio,
etc.). Csemiczky himself was an amateur radio-fan; he even published an article
about how to advertise a radio set.1
István Irsai, a Hungarian Jewish architect and interior designer, born and educated
Flower of Night. Poster by Tibor Réz-Diamant. ©
Hungart 2018. © National Széchenyi Library.
Budapest
2018. 07. 13. 14:13:00

in Budapest, had returned from
the Palestine Mandatory in 1930
to work as a commercial graphic
designer. He became a renowned
designer of typography, creating
the first modern Hebrew font –
called “Haim” – and decorative
modern fonts that appeared in clear
and stunning compositions. His
posters (Nor-Coc swimsuit and cap,
Bagarol shoe cream, Flora soap, etc.)
combined clear functional design
with highly decorative composition.
As in the field of furniture design,
the Constructivist-Modernist style
is hard to distinguish from the
Modernism-inspired Art Deco.
MODERNISM AND/OR ART
DECO?
At that time Modernism, the
parallel strand to Art Deco, limited
itself to the field of commercial
design. Big companies, such as
the Italian tobacco paper brand
Modiano, the electro-technical concern Tungsram, and the detergent brand
Flora needed new ideas for their campaigns which led them to approach the
Constructivist artists. The need for novelty has always been a characteristic of
commercial advertising, but at that time it was also a result of radical changes
in everyday life: new lifestyles, in which modern household items (washing
machine, electric light, radio, etc.), sportswear, new types of products (such as
cigarettes even for ladies), and equipment for hobbies all required a fresh outlook.
In tandem with this, Art Deco dominated the realms of desires and dreams, in
particular in the cinema poster, as well as in anything connected with the beauty
industry: cosmetics and fashion, then of course entertainment, travel, leisure,
nightlife, revues, bars, etc.
To distinguish Art Deco from Modernism in the field of poster art John
Barnicoat uses a slightly different terminology in his Posters, a Concise History:
“Two elements seem to have been at work: formal modern design and decorative
Lake Balaton. Poster by György Konecsni. ©
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
2018. 07. 13. 14:13:03

modern. The first springs from the
idea of function, which replaced
the single word ‘ornament’ that
had described the design of the
nineteenth century. It represents
that forward-looking design that
links art with industry in the age of
technology. The second element,
decorative modern – regarded as
backward-looking by Le Corbusier
and his supporters – thrived in
times of affluence, it represented
the work of the individual and, as
far as posters are concerned, was
usually connected with painting.”2
He derived both of them from
Cubism, as art’s first steps towards
abstraction. He adds: “we have
two distinct lines of development
in poster design between 1910
and 1939, one stemming from
Cubist abstraction (but even more
precise), and the other, based on
decorative angular patterns that
also take in Cubist developments.”
The “decorative modern” or “Art Deco” treats modern or Cubist abstract style
elements as decorative tools, as ornaments. Nevertheless the abstractions of
Constructivism/Modernism seem to be only one source of inspiration, which is
often mixed with others. Two desires defined the taste of the middle classes: one
for Modernism, and another for luxury and elegance. The combination of the
two resulted in a heterogeneous style. This heterogeneity is a key characteristic of
Hungarian Art Deco posters. We can list some of the main influences:
1. Inspiration of the decorative elements of avantgarde movements (-isms);
2. Art Nouveau influence – reshaped & modernised;
3. Folk art;
4. Historicism and folk art – through Applied Art;
5. Orientalism or exoticism;
6. Western Modernist influences: monumental and luxurious elegance;
7. Classicism & decorative Modernism / on travel posters.
Metropolis, 1928. Poster by József Bottlik. ©
National Széchenyi Library, Budapest
2018. 07. 13. 14:13:13

Three “highlights” of the Hungarian
Art Deco poster art follow in the
next section.
HIGHLIGHTS
József Bottlik: Metropolis, 1928
The Metropolis poster by Bottlik is
an outstanding Hungarian design.
There is only one known original
specimen of it (in the collection of
the Hungarian National Library).
Its high artistic value comes
from the perfect combination of
script and image, the harmony of
colours, the balance of elegance and
monumentality. There is no doubt
that this is Art Deco: it is both
Monumental and decorative. It was
created for the world-famous movie
of German Expressionist cinema,
directed by Fritz Lang.
Bottlik found a new symbol for the
story that did not appear on German
or American posters made for the film:
the heroic figure of the working class
who carries the splendid big city on his
shoulders. For movie posters it is easy
to make an international comparison,
and the posters of Metropolis are
world-renowned valuable pieces.
There is the monumental city skyline
by Boris Bilinsky, of landscape format
and the vertical poster by Heinz
Schulz-Neudamm, to mention the
most noted ones: both are spectacular Art Deco works, showing the influences of
Modernism and Expressionism – and still, I believe Bottlik’s piece measures up to
both.
Radio Orion. Poster by József Bottlik. © Museum
of Fine Arts, Budapest
2018. 07. 13. 14:13:17

Bottlik started his career with a decorative popular Art Nouveau style; he gained
fame with the “SZIT Lacika” advertisement figure in the early 1920s, but quickly
turned away from what was a saccharine and retrograde style. He became the head
designer of the famous electrotechnical company, Orion – his position was similar to
Csemiczky’s at the rival firm Tungsram. The first posters Bottlik made for the firm
date from around 1922–1923; in 1924 the company took the name Orion and in
1925 Bottlik designed a new logo which remained in use until the 1980s.
The Orion posters show his attraction towards monumentality that is a key
element of the Metropolis poster’s composition as well. Monumentality and a
decorative-attractive approach are prevalent in the poster art of the time: the
robust, strong and modelled figures appear on Ludwig Hohlwein’s posters (often
carrying political meaning: the strength of Nazi power). Without this political
background, similar figures appeared on sport and movie posters.
The artistic approach of Bottlik is itself typical of the Art Deco style: he took
over the idea of representing the working class as a muscular man from political
posters; meanwhile he took inspirations from Art Nouveau, oriental art, the
American shiny Art Deco style, and from Modernism as well. The poster tells
about the main orientations of the age: the whole is a cosmic vision, yet tensions
simmer below the shiny surface.
Tibor Réz-Diamant: Movies & Stars
Before looking at another masterpiece of the era, Tibor Réz-Diamant’s Baker, let us say
a few words about the “average” quality of the movie posters of the age. The 1920s and
30s are widely considered as the first golden age of cinema. However, beside the high
artistic value of German expressionist cinema and Chaplin’s movies in the US, etc., this
period saw also the birth of Hollywood kitsch. With the invention of sound cinema
in 1927, the film industry slowly started to change. Beside the first classic horror and
sci-fi movies, the average Hollywood output consisted of stereotyped romantic stories,
either in historical, oriental, or in big city scenes. This new industrial-style cinema
production created superstars adored by millions worldwide, including women who
appeared in new roles portraying independent, ruling or demonic attitudes, different
from the “naïve girl” ideal prevalent until then.
The cult of stars brought with it an impoverishment of movie poster quality.
Posters now had to show the faces of stars in large format in often uninspired and
stereotypical compositions. The portraits were often servile copies of photographs,
with no original idea behind the design. Fortunately there were exceptions: usually
the Art Deco works.
2018. 07. 13. 14:13:26

Such were the designs for posters
of movies, revues, variety shows
of Tibor Réz-Diamant. From
1925, he designed more than 20
posters in just a couple of years,
before leaving the country in 1928
to work as a draughtsman at the
Benz car factory in Germany.
The key to his success lay in his
empathy for contemporary tastes.
This is evident on his Tiller Girls
poster (1927), created for the
premiere of the movie featuring
the famous American dancers. The
Girls appear as uniform patterns,
creating a decorative rhythm.
His most daring work is the
Josephine Baker poster. The
world-famous dancer and singer
performed shows in the Budapest
Royal Orfeum for an entire month
in 1928 and had enthusiastic fans
in Hungary. The theatre director
and composer Béla Zerkovitz
composed a song about her in 1926
(titled Gyere Jozefin = “Come,
Josephine”), a later French version
of which she later performed with
some success. Josephine’s guest
appearances in Budapest were
huge successes that attracted international attention and audiences, even though
the show was almost prohibited because of her appearance on stage in nothing
but a banana skirt.
Réz also created posters for other performances and movies of Baker and her
Hungarian “avatar” Nusi Somogyi. While these works are in general of a
more lavish composition, his Baker poster is considered outstanding due to its
simplicity. It only showed her trademark curly bangs and cat-like eyes, which
created a powerful emblem for the show. The same idea appeared on a poster by
Jean Chassaing from 1931, but was still more realistic than Réz’s almost abstract
logo-like work.
Szeged Open-Air Festival. Poster by György
Konecsni. © Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
2018. 07. 13. 14:13:27

Baker was not just a star; she was an emblem of the age. On the poster her face
appears as a mask. As a recent book on the visual culture of the First World War
shows, the Mask became an influential symbol of a period marked by post-war
trauma. It was a time when war cripples came home with partly missing faces,
prompting the development of an artificial face/mask industry. As a consequence,
the cosmetics industry spread worldwide, while modern plastic surgery was born.
The stars of the time also wore mask-like thick makeup, and the shiny white
silhouette of Greta Garbo’s sad-eyed face expressed the new post-war type of
beauty in a world built on appearances. Even if Josephine Baker was a symbol of
“natural” or “wild” beauty, her face also appeared as a mask.
Revues, cabarets and entertainment cinema provided an area in which the Art
Deco tastes of the middle class could flourish: these are themselves products of
the dream factory. Finally, let us have a look at another field of desires: travel and
leisure, the dreamlike travel poster art of the period.
György Konecsni: Budapest, City of Spas, 1935
As mentioned above, the interwar period saw radical changes in everyday life,
which included a growing interest in and demand for tourism. The great theorist
of the time, Sigfried Kracauer wrote about this phenomenon in his essay “Travel
and Dance”3
. Behind the desire to travel he saw the “wish to be somewhere else”:
his motto is from Baudelaire: “But only those who leave for leaving’s sake / are
travellers; hearts tugging like balloons…”. In this sense, travel can be seen as
a symptom of the age, similar to the mass production of dreamy movies, and
the wish for entertainment in the form of erotic revues. This truly was an age of
escapism; the hard reality caused a need for entertainment and globe-trotting.
Tourism became a mass hobby and an important industry for many countries after
the Great War. Hungary, a small country that had lost immense territories and
prestige in the war, woke up relatively late. The big Western countries by then
already had established tourism industries as well as well-functioning propaganda
machines to promote them; one has only to think of the works of Cassandre
(Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron) in France.
Great travel posters attract the eye in a range of ways: by highlighting points
of interest, depicting the conveyance used to reach a location, or by featuring
activities available at the destination. The golden age of travel posters worldwide
started in the 1920s and ended with the expansion of photography in the field
around the 1960s.
2018. 07. 13. 14:13:35

In 1932 a conference took place in Hungary, in which famous personalities, such
as writers and experts expressed their views about the importance of tourism,
and Hungary’s underdevelopment in this field. In 1933 the Hungarian National
Railways organised a poster exhibition in which selected foreign posters were
presented as exemplars. Poster competitions played an important role in the
development of the travel poster genre: in 1932 the Gellért Spa announced a
tender, and the submitted works served the general touristic idea of “Budapest
the city of spas”, which was developed in the following decades. György Konecsni
first appeared at this tender, by winning it with a splendid, classical design.4
His
work was never printed, but it enabled him to make his name in the field. In 1935
the city of Budapest invited a tender for posters promoting the city,5
the results
of which were published in the art magazine Hungarian Applied Art. By then
Budapest had undoubtedly adopted the image of a modern metropolis. Besides
the capital, the developing Hungarian tourism sector also began to focus on
Lake Balaton. In the 1930s painters and poster designers created a colourful and
appealing image by using high viewpoints and showing the lake’s vast expanse
of water.
Hungarian travel posters mostly followed the international trend of the travel
poster genre: offering a luring view, highlighting the local spectacles, while
using elements of modernism. Travel posters were often commissioned by the
government, so inevitably reflected the prevailing political climate. This was also
evident in a new Classicist style in painting at the time which had an impact on
poster design as well, as can be seen in the work of Konecsni and others.
1
http://epa.oszk.hu/02500/02506/00077/pdf/EPA02506_magyar_grafika_1929_09-10.pdf.
2
Barnicoat, 73.
3
Siegfried Kracauer: The Mass Ornament. Weimar Essays. University Press London, 1963. https://
books.google.hu/books?id=yIWJASvV9uwC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=kracauer+travel+
and+dance&source=bl&ots=o2SdYx7ppk&sig=IpvqieeCQzJMfAHEFeNEQrd8gqI&hl=en&s
a=X&ved=0ahUKEwiRqcern7XRAhVIcRQKHfiRBxcQ6AEIHTAB#v=onepage&q=kracau
er%20travel%20and%20dance&f=false.
4
http://epa.oszk.hu/01000/01059/00189/pdf/EPA01059_MagyarIparmuveszet_1933_1-2_19-33.pdf.
5
http://epa.oszk.hu/01000/01059/00200/pdf/EPA01059_MagyarIparmuveszet_1935_3_69-70.pdf.
2018. 07. 13. 14:13:37

Aniko Katona Hungarian Art Deco Posters

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