Where his name appears, the success of the exhibition is guaranteed; Marc Chagall’s works have attracted and amazed audiences for a long time now. The art historians of the Hungarian National Museum intend to use Chagall’s fame and appeal to introduce a lesser known Hungarian artist, Imre Ámos, who lived during the first half of the twentieth century. Until January, the museum will host these two integrated exhibitions: a chronological display of 65 works by Marc Chagall selected from the Musée du Luxembourg's Parisian show, and a thematic overview of the last artistic period of the Hungarian painter, Ámos. Thus, the visitor gets a spectacular experience, even more than from most travelling exhibitions. You are able to become acquainted with some local aspects of modern art with Jewish origins, while also enjoying the genius of the Russian painter. But is there really a connection between the great master and his Hungarian contemporary? They met only once for a short hour, when Ámos and his wife stayed in Paris in 1937 and they visited Chagall’s studio. Chagall encouraged the young artist, and the meeting had a determining impact on Ámos. He had already known Chagall’s work from magazines, but in Paris he had his first chance to see the originals. However, if we examine the exhibited works at the National Gallery, they don’t have very much in common upon first glance. After being lost in Chagall’s bright-colored optimistic dream world and trying to decode his dense symbolic language, Ámos’ smaller canvases, painted with melancholic earth tones, seem to reflect a totally different world: pain, deformity and threatening prophecies of the future.
What Chagall and Ámos shared is their Eastern-European Jewish identity – they both came from traditional communities in the countryside. They both revitalized and to some extent Christianized the old Hasidic traditions and legends by the means of modern painting. For example the threefold motive of the rooster – which can be the sign of remorse, the symbol of artistic creativity or the harbinger of the future – appears on works by both painters. In Chagall’s world, the harmony of animals and human beings remains present, while we can observe the disenchantment in Ámos’ works. The cock before the burning synagogue foretells the horrifying events which changed the world in the 1940s, when harmony was lost for a long time.
The differences in the fate of the two painters determined the dissimilarity of their artistic visions. Chagall was born in nineteenth-century Russia, twenty years earlier than Ámos. Chagall survived two world wars, revolutions, endless years of exiles in Paris and New York, and lived almost a hundred years, whereas Ámos died in a German concentration camp before turning forty-years-old. Due to these contrasts, the comparison of their art makes a dramatic impression. It is really exciting to examine how differently they reacted to the horror of the Second World War. In Chagall’s paintings, however dark the situation is, there is always hope for a new beginning. In his compositions, destruction is juxtaposed by the idyll of love and the figures of the flying lovers who survive even in the worst of times. On the contrary, the tragedy of Ámos’ personal life seems to be reflected in the brutality of his pictures. Even if Imre Ámos was not the “Hungarian Chagall”, the twin exhibitions offer an exciting twofold experience of art: the bright side is presented by Chagall, while Ámos’ works shed a light on the dark side of the world.Alexandra Kocsis, Medieval Studies, Hungary
Chagall - Between War and Peace.
Ámos Imre, the "Hungarian Chagall" - In the Vortex of War 1937-1944
Hungarian National Gallery, 13 September 2013 - 5 January 2014
Top: Imre Ámos: War, 1940. Hungarian National Gallery
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