Standing Female Nude from the Front József Nemes-Lampérth

Short-lived József Nemes Lampérth debuted with an already mature style in 1911. His subjects were restricted to still lifes, portraits, nudes and landscapes. He transposed the concise and expressive style of his nude drawings into his paintings, but he exchanged the scratchy texture for relief-like, impasto treatment of oil surfaces. The background and the figure are in strong contrast: in front of a dark drapery, a bright block of a female nude takes shape in the light, the superimposed planar surfaces of various tone and colour degrees emphasize the plastic values of the masses. The individual features of the woman standing in contrapposto are overshadowed, while the robust body coalesces into an apparently finite architecture of forms. The dramatic light-and-shade contrasts and the rhythm of the thick paint spread with arched brushstrokes suggest suppressed tension. The picture was displayed in the National Salon with its pair Standing Female Nude from Behind at the “Youths” exhibition in 1917. His works were regularly reproduced in Lajos Kassák’s periodicals, Tett (Action) and MA (Today).