István Réti

István Réti (26 December 1872 – 17 January 1945) was a Hungarian painter, professor, art historian and leading member, as well as a founder and theoretician, of the Nagybánya artists' colony.

Réti, born in Nagybánya (from 1918 Baia Mare, Romania), began his studies at the Budapest School of Drawing in 1890 but left after a month. From 1891 he studied at Simon Hollósy's free painting academy in Munich, and later at the Académie Julian in Paris. Returning home, he painted his first significant work, "Bohémek karácsonyestje idegenben" ("Christmas Night of the Bohemians Abroad", 1893). This nostalgic lamplit interior, typical of the period, [http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T071626 "Réti, István"] , Oxford Art Online] was exhibited at the Palace of Art and purchased by the state. In 1894 he travelled to Turin, where he painted "Kossuth Lajos a ravatalon" ("Lajos Kossuth on His Bier"); the revolutionary had just died there.ro icon [http://www.nagybanya-art.ro/main.php?l=ro&m=3&sm=3&id=36 "Réti István"] , from the Székely Museum of Ciuc] He was attracted by the work of Jules Bastien-Lepage, and an 1895 trip to Paris introduced him to the work of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes.

Together with János Thorma, Réti helped persuade Hollósy to move his school to Nagybánya and in 1896 was one of the founders of the artists' colony there. Starting in 1902 he was a professor at its free painting academy, and in 1911 he was one of the founders of the Nagybánya Painters' Association. Although he moved to Budapest in 1913 to teach at the University of Fine Arts, he continued making improvements to the Nagybánya school in summer and taught there until 1927. From 1920 he worked to reform the university according to Nagybánya principles together with Károly Lyka, serving as its president from 1927 to 1935 before retiring in 1938. He spent the last decade of his life writing a history of the Nagybánya artists' colony, and died in Budapest.

In his first phase as a painter, Réti's chief interests were light and interiors, especially lamps or sunlight streaming through windows ("Gyötrődés" — "Cacophony", 1894; "Öregasszonyok" — "Old Women", 1900; "Kenyérszelés" — "Slicing the Bread", 1906). The "plein air" landscape painting programme at Nagybánya did not have much influence on him. In 1899 he produced one of his best-known canvases, "Honvédtemetés" ("Burial of a Hungarian Soldier"), which referred to the 1848 revolution; the unity of the landscape and people is bound together by the grey of the dusk. In 1904–07 (the last two years working in Rome) he painted several variations of "Krisztus apostolok között" ("Christ with the Apostles"), his most significant religious work. After 1910 he created several decorative paintings, such as "Cigánylány" ("The Gypsy Girl", 1912), and many portraits and self-portraits, including one of Kossuth in 1931. In his later years, Réti worked relatively slowly, taking long breaks between paintings and undertaking theoretical preparation for each new one. It is probably due to this fact that his oeuvre is rather inconsistent; as he concentrated on teaching, his output diminished in both quality and quantity. From an early age he was preoccupied by contemporary questions of artistic theory, which he also tried to explore as a professor; after 1920 his written output on artistic subjects increased in quantity, [http://www.hung-art.hu/frames-e.html?/english/r/reti/ "Réti, István"] , Fine Arts in Hungary] and his writings on aesthetics, influenced by Croce and Bergson, had a more profound effect than his painting or teaching activities.

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* [http://www.hung-art.hu/frames-e.html?/english/r/reti/muvek/index.html Works by István Réti]