Tapestry - Fair

Each tapestry depicts a scene from village life. On the first one, the couple is shown as in an old photo: they sit in a stiff arrangement, touching. Only the main features of their faces appear in the picture, their clothing is just colour patches the flowers in the background curtain are faded. The other tapestry commemorates a great event for contemporary children and grown-ups in villages: the fair. It is a detail of the crowd, viewed from above like a memory. The artist remembers the shapes, lines and colours, the people have no faces. Most of the peasant women and shepherds turn their backs towards the viewer, the only woman pictured facing us bends her head down. There is no horizon in the picture, thus we cannot gain a whole picture of the fair. The border cuts in the clothing of the women, emphasizing the contingency of the scene. Among the Vaszary tapestries it is probably the Fair that radiates most the influence of Emile Bernard (Breton women in the fair, Breton women picking pear, 1888). The works of these both artists depict a frozen activity, with no constructed space around them. The figures and objects are shaped of colour patches placed beside each other. With these principles in mind, Vaszary created his own, individual style. The slightly happier colours of the Couple - purple-pink, white, dark blue, gray and light blue - turn slightly more serious at the Fair - purple pink, bluish gray, blackish blue, white. These tapestries with thier colours, the dynamic, thick contours together with the above principles of composition are outstanding works of Art Nouveau. The above tapestries, together with the peony armchair and the peony curtains, were made for the Hungarian Hall of the 1905 exhibition in Venice, designed by Zoltán Bálint and Lajos Jámbor. From the correspondence of Sarolta Kovalszky and Jenő Radisics (the contemporary director of the Budapest Museum of Applied Arts), it is apparent that the tapestries and the curtains were woven at Németelemér, the upholstery of the armchairs at the neighbouring Nagybecskerek, in two months (see Budapest Museum of Applied Arts, Archives 69, 145/1905). One variant of the Fair was made by the Gödöllő workshop in 1907 (see Magyar Iparművészet Vol. 10, 1907, p.142).