Károly Patkó Lot n° 731

Károly Patkó - Landscape at Törökkoppány. Oil on canvas. 1927. ca. 80 x 65 cm. Signed and dated lower right. Verso with large-scale color samples on the canvas. - Summery colorful landscape from Törökkoppány - Typical motif Károly Patkós late 1920s - Clearly visible influence of the role model Paul Cézanne Károly Patkó is the third child of an Austrian civil servant couple. His two older siblings Rudolf (1888) and Anna (1892) were still born in Vienna, while Károly (1895) and the younger Péter (1905) were born in Budapest, where the family lived. He changed his original name Karl Paumkirchner to the Hungarian version Károly Patkó in 1914. His extraordinary artistic talent is evident from an early age, and while still at school he gives drawing lessons to others. In 1914-1920 he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest and belonged to the circle around the artist István Szőnyi (1894-1960). With his artist friend Vilmos Aba-Novák (1894-1941) he travels to the famous artists' colony in Nagybánya. Thanks to a scholarship, Patkó lived in Rome from 1929 to 1931. From there, together with Aba-Novák, he travels extensively throughout Italy to Sicily, studying the works of the Old Masters in the museums. He discovered the traditional tempera technique for himself, which became an important means of expression during his time in Rome. Patkó, who is described as introverted and withdrawn, hardly takes part in the social life of the scholars in Rome. After his return, he worked as a drawing teacher in Budapest. In 1922 Patkó's first exhibition was shown in the exhibition hall of the Belvedere, and during the 1920s further exhibitions followed regularly in the Kunsthalle and the Ernst Múzeum in Budapest. In the 1930s Patkó is repeatedly represented with works at the Venice Biennale. After Patkó's death in 1941, the Hungarian art historian Tibor Gerevich (1882-1954) organized a memorial exhibition at the National Salon in Budapest. A large part of Károly Patkó's manageable œuvre was exported to the West by his eldest brother Rudolf during or after the Second World War. It is thanks to him, who settled in London in 1940 as a cook under the anglicized name Rudolf Palmer, that Patkó's works became known to a broad international public after all, despite his early death. Rudolf Palmer organized exhibitions in the Vienna Konzerthaus (1950) and in the New Gallery of the Viennese art dealer Otto Kallir (1955, both under the name "Karl Pátko"), as well as in 1957 in the Foyles Art Gallery in London ("Charles Patko"). Since the turn of the millennium, Károly Patkó's works have increasingly reappeared on the international art market in Hungary, London and Germany. Due to his early death, Patkó's creative period spanned only two decades in the 1920s and 1930s. In his characteristic painting style and vivid color choices, the strong influence of Paul Cézanne and the French Fauves is clearly evident. The painting offered here shows a summer scene in the surroundings of Törökkoppány. In this Hungarian region Patkó and Aba-Novák spend the summer months of 1927 and 1928, at times with other artist friends. They created numerous idyllic landscapes filled with an extraordinary richness of color and glistening summer light. Only today, after the rediscovery of the Hungarian Fauves, the paintings of Károly Patkó and his contemporaries are appreciated again and are sought after by international collectors. Exhibition: A László Károly-gyűjtemény. Részletek egy bázeli műgyűjteményből (The Carl Laszlo Collection. Part of an Art Collection from Basel), Budapesti Történeti Múzeum, Fővárosi Képtár (Budapest History Museum, Municipal Gallery), Budapest 1996, cat.No. 90, p. 96. Provenance: Bizományi Áruház Vállalat (BÁV), Budapest September 1981, lot 145; Kieselbach Gáleria, Budapest 11.9.2011, lot 96; Biksady Galéria, Budapest 30.11.2011, lot 100; Carl Laszlo Collection, Basel; private collection, Europe. Taxation: differential VAT: Margin Scheme