Joseph Csaky

Early life '', plaster lost, photo Galerie René Reichard, Frankfurt. Exhibited at the 1912 Salon d'Automne, and Salon des Indépendants, 1913, Paris József Csáky was born in Szeged, Hungary, then part of the dual monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A provincial southern city, Szeged is now the third-largest in the country. Csaky moved with his family to Budapest at an early age, where he frequented museums and galleries. In 1905, Csaky was accepted at the Academy of Applied Arts (Mintarajziskola) in Budapest, By autumn of 1908 he shared a studio space at Cité Falguière with Joseph Brummer, a Hungarian friend who had opened the Brummer Gallery with his brothers and was studying art. Within three weeks of Csaky's arrival in Paris, Brummer showed the newcomer a sculpture he was working on: an exact copy of an African sculpture from the Congo. Brummer told Csaky that another artist in Paris, a Spaniard named Pablo Picasso, was painting in the spirit of 'Negro' sculptures. '', original plaster, exhibited at the Salon d'Automne of 1912, Paris, n. 405, and Salon des Indépendants of 1914, n. 813, photo from Csaky archives AC.110 , 1913, Plaster lost. Photo published in Montjoie!'' March 1914, also Richard, René, 1988 Shortly after, Csaky found a studio at the artists' collective La Ruche in Montparnasse. The building had been constructed by Gustave Eiffel, and was adapted as artists' studios by the sculptor Alfred Boucher. Among other émigré artists at La Ruche were Alexander Archipenko (who arrived in Paris the same year), Wladimir Baranoff-Rossine, and Sonia Delaunay (Terk). In the early years of the 20th century, other artists who lived there for a time included Guillaume Apollinaire, Ossip Zadkine, Moise Kisling, Marc Chagall, Max Pechstein, Fernand Léger, Jacques Lipchitz, Max Jacob, Blaise Cendrars, Chaïm Soutine, Robert Delaunay, Amedeo Modigliani, Constantin Brâncuși, and Diego Rivera, attracted to Paris from across Europe and Mexico. With his discovery of the work of Auguste Rodin laying the groundwork for an oeuvre characterized by a mastery of sculptural techniques, Csaky's work in stone carving would evolve. The inspirations that led Csaky to Cubism were diverse, as they were for artists of the Bateau-Lavoir, on the one hand, or the Puteaux Group on the other. While art historians are divided on the influence of African art in the distillation of Cubism, they generally agree that Cézanne's geometric syntax was significant, as well as Seurat's approach to painting. Given a growing dissatisfaction with the classical methods of representation, and the contemporary changes—the industrial revolution, exposure to art from across the world—artists began to transform their expression. In 1911, Csaky exhibited his Cubist sculptures at the Salon des Indépendants (21 April – 13 June) with Archipenko, Duchamp, Gleizes, Laurencin, La Fresnaye, Léger, Picabia and Metzinger. This exhibition provoked an 'involuntary scandal' out of which Cubism, brought to the attention of the general public for the first time, emerged and spread throughout Paris and beyond. Four months later Csaky exhibited at the ''Salon d'Automne'' (1 October – 8 November) together with the same artists, in addition to Modigliani, Lhote, Duchamp-Villon, Villon and František Kupka. The following year Csaky showed with the Cubists at the 1912 Salon des Indépendants (20 March – 16 May): with Archipenko, Gleizes, La Fresnaye, Laurencin, Le Fauconnier, Léger, Lhote, Zadkine, Duchamp, Constantin Brâncuși, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Robert Delaunay, Juan Gris, Piet Mondrian, Alfréd Réth, and Diego Rivera. ('' of 1911–12 is exhibited to the left, in front of two sculptures by Amedeo Modigliani. Other works are shown by Jean Metzinger, František Kupka, Francis Picabia and Henri Le Fauconnier. Csaky participated in the Salon d'Automne of 1912 (1 October – 8 November) with the Cubists: Duchamp, Duchamp-Villon, Gleizes, La Fresnaye, Le Fauconnier, Léger, Lhote, Marcoussis, Metzinger, Picabia, Villon and Kupka. A rare photograph of the 1912 Salon d'Automne shows Csaky's Groupe de femmes, a sculpture now lost, exhibited in front of Kupka's Amorpha: Fugue in Two Colours and next to sculptures by Amedeo Modigliani. In the same photograph can be seen Henri Le Fauconnier's vast composition Les Montagnards attaqués par des ours (Mountaineers Attacked by Bears,) now at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum; and Francis Picabia's monumental La Source (The Spring), now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. , André Salmon, ''Head (Tête d'homme)'' by Joseph Csaky reproduced, 3rd issue, 18 March 1914 Csaky exhibited as a member of ''Section d'Or'' at the Galerie La Boétie (10–30 October 1912), with Archipenko, Duchamp-Villon, La Fresnaye, Gleizes, Gris, Laurencin, Léger, Lhote, Marcoussis, Metzinger, Picabia, Kupka, Villon and Duchamp. By this time, Csaky's participation in the avant-garde milieu was complete. 1914–1918 , 1920 "One could say that before the war, life in Paris had been like a summer day, and after the announcement of war the sky and life were darkened by weighty, heavy clouds" (Joseph Csaky) These 1919 works (e.g., Cones and Spheres, Abstract Sculpture) are made of juxtaposing sequences of rhythmic geometric forms, where light and shadow, mass and the void, play a key role. They allude, occasionally, to the structure of the human body or modern machines, but the semblance functions only as "elements" (Reverdy) and are deprived of descriptive narrative. Csaky's polychrome reliefs of the early 1920s display an affinity with Purism—an extreme form of the Cubism aesthetic developing at the time—in their rigorous economy of architectonic symbols and the use of crystalline geometric structures. "a puritanical denial of sensuousness that reduced the cubist vocabulary to rectangles, verticals, horizontals," writes Balas, "a Spartan alliance of discipline and strength" to which Csaky adhered in his Tower Figures. "In their aesthetic order, lucidity, classical precision, emotional neutrality, and remoteness from visible reality, they should be considered stylistically and historically as belonging to the De Stijl movement." (Balas, 1998) 1928–1971, Toward figurativism From 1928, while his fellow pioneers tended towards greater abstraction, Csaky moved away both from the faceted Cubism of his early Parisian epoch, and from the highly abstract or nonrepresentational intent of his post-war series. Turning towards figurative art, he no longer saw potential in abstraction. Waldemar George, the Polish-French art critic, writes in 1930 of Csaky's departure from abstraction: "The cube, the polyhedron with right angles with its abrupt edges, are replaced by ovoids and spheres." Turning towards a more representational figuration—in a highly stylized, curvilinear and descriptive form—allowed Csaky the contact with reality, a reality that ran deeper than surface appearances. For the rest of his life, he was interested primarily in the female body in youth, a theme that expressed optimism, happiness and well-being. He was fascinated by the beauty and expressiveness of the human form in itself. He explored the subject to express his ideas and connotations attached to them. His monumental figures (although not always in sheer size) possess a timeless "amaranthine beauty, a fundamental essence relevant only to themselves." Csaky continued exhibiting from the 1930s onwards; he was shown internationally, with shows in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Brussels, Hungary, and Luxembourg. In 1935, he traveled in Greece, an experience that shaped his artistic exploration of nudes for the remainder of his life. He had an exhibit there in 1965. Csaky died in Paris on 1 May 1971. ==Legacy==