1927 Ernst Múzeum Group Exhibition

In September 1927 György Rauscher showed sixteen works at the Ernst Múzeum in Budapest. This was a six-artist group exhibition, not a solo retrospective, though the Magyar Életrajzi Lexikon later called it a gyűjteményes (solo) show (/bibliography#szamado-2019, pp. 11-12; /bibliography#mel).

The exhibition

Rauscher showed alongside Derkovits Gyula, Molnár C. Pál, Simon György János, Cselényi Walleshausen Zsigmond, and the sculptor Kósa Mária.

His sixteen works included Csók (The Kiss), Cigányok (Gypsies), the Szomory Dezső portrait, Apácák (Nuns), Ikrek (Twins), Fürdőzők (Bathers), Merengő Zsidó (the Talmudista), and a self-portrait.

Reception, and the artist’s own words

The Pesti Hírlap of 11 September 1927 found the work “almost ascetically cold” (/bibliography#pesti-hirlap-1927-09-11), while Rabinovszky Márius, in Nyugat, called Rauscher “startlingly decadent … because his suggestive artistic power is very great” (/bibliography#nyugat-1927-05-01).

The catalogue of this exhibition carried Rauscher’s only surviving first-person statement, beginning “Even my most colourful colours are grey.” Both the reception and the statement are set out at /biography/hungarian-years.