Joseph Csaky (also written Josef Csàky, Csáky József, József Csáky and Joseph Alexandre Csaky) (18 March 1888 – 1 May 1971) was a Hungarian avant-garde artist, sculptor, and graphic artist, best known for his early participation in the Cubist movement as a sculptor. Csaky was one of the first sculptors in Paris to apply the principles of pictorial Cubism to his art. A pioneer of modern sculpture,Edith Balas, 1998, Joseph Csaky: A Pioneer of Modern Sculpture, Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society Csaky is among the most important sculptors of the early 20th century.Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Joseph Csáky, Collection Online He was an active member of the Section d'Or group between 1911 and 1914, and closely associated with Crystal Cubism, Purism, De Stijl, Abstract art, and Art Deco throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
Csaky fought alongside French soldiers during World War I and in 1922 became a naturalized French citizen. He was a founding member of l'Union des Artistes modernes (UAM) in 1929. During World War II, Csaky joined forces with the French underground movement (la Résistance) in Valençay. In the late 1920s, he collaborated with some other artists in designing furniture and other decorative pieces, including elements of the Studio House of the fashion designer Jacques Doucet.
After 1928, Csaky moved away from Cubism into a more figurative or representational style for nearly thirty years. He exhibited internationally across Europe, but some of his pioneering artistic innovation was forgotten. His work today is primarily held by French and Hungarian institutions, as well as museums, galleries and private collections both in France and abroad.Joseph Csáky works at the Hungarian National Gallery
Biography
Early life
József Csáky was born in Szeged, Hungary, then part of the dual monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A provincial southern city, Szeged is now the third-largest in the country.
Csaky moved with his family to Budapest at an early age, where he frequented museums and galleries. In 1905, Csaky was accepted at the Academy of Applied Arts (Mintarajziskola) in Budapest, where he studied under the direction of the sculptor Mátrai Lajos, ifj. (1875–1945) for one and a half years. His interest centered around figure drawing, but, dissatisfied with the local traditional art training (which consisted of copying sculptures in plaster and modeling wild flowers out of clay), Csaky and fellow students left the school to study in the workshop of the photographer-painter László Kimnach, in Buda.
In 1907, for six and a half months, he worked in the Zsolnay Factory in Pécs, making ceramic ashtrays and vases. He worked briefly as a metal founder in Budapest, and at one point with a taxidermist. Attracted by its reputation for lights and great artists, Csaky made the decision to move to Paris, France, and did so with only forty francs in his pocket. He traveled mostly by foot, walking fifty or sixty kilometers per day during the summer of 1908. In Paris a 'new world' opened up for him. He made a living by doing odd jobs: working as a peddler, stone cutter, and posing as a model for students at a local art school, making 20 francs a week. He later posed for individual artists in their own studios, making more money and leaving plenty of time free to pursue his own work.József Csáky, terminartors.com Szelesi Zoltán, 1969, Móra Ferenc Múzeum Évkönyve, Szeged, Párizsba induló szegedi művészek a század elején By autumn of 1908 he shared a studio space at Cité Falguière with Joseph Brummer, a Hungarian friend who had opened the Brummer Gallery with his brothers and was studying art. Within three weeks of Csaky's arrival in Paris, Brummer showed the newcomer a sculpture he was working on: an exact copy of an African sculpture from the Congo. Brummer told Csaky that another artist in Paris, a Spaniard named Pablo Picasso, was painting in the spirit of 'Negro' sculptures.
Shortly after, Csaky found a studio at the artists' collective La Ruche in Montparnasse. The building had been constructed by Gustave Eiffel, and was adapted as artists' studios by the sculptor Alfred Boucher. Among other émigré artists at La Ruche were Alexander Archipenko (who arrived in Paris the same year), Wladimir Baranoff-Rossine, and Sonia Delaunay (Terk). In the early years of the 20th century, other artists who lived there for a time included Guillaume Apollinaire, Ossip Zadkine, Moise Kisling, Marc Chagall, Max Pechstein, Fernand Léger, Jacques Lipchitz, Max Jacob, Blaise Cendrars, Chaïm Soutine, Robert Delaunay, Amedeo Modigliani, Constantin Brâncuși, and Diego Rivera, attracted to Paris from across Europe and Mexico.
With his discovery of the work of Auguste Rodin laying the groundwork for an oeuvre characterized by a mastery of sculptural techniques, Csaky's work in stone carving would evolve.
Csaky's work of this time is already distinguished by a Cubist understanding of volumetric and spatial relationships, with the integration of armature and open space, and the rhythmic use of geometry. Planes are faceted into abstract architectonic forms. His sculptural interpretation of Cubist painting is marked by elements employed in non-Western sculpture (Cycladic art, Oceanic art, the Art of ancient Egypt).
Soon Csaky and his new Parisian girlfriend Jeanne moved into a studio together on rue Didot, near the Pasteur Institute and Montparnasse Cemetery. They married. "Thinking back on my life now," Csaky would later write, "I am amazed by the speed of the events. A few months before I had been a poor and helpless fellow who had found himself in a strange country all alone, not even speaking the language. And then, all of a sudden, from one minute to the next, I became a man with an orderly life, a place of his own and a wife, an honest, and good working woman." (Joseph Csaky)
This relationship did not last long. The two separated but continued a friendship. Csaky rented a small attic studio on rue Dalou. In 1910, Csaky won the Ferenc József Art Scholarship in Szeged, giving him enough money to attend l'Académie de La Palette, a private school in Paris where the painters Jean Metzinger, André Dunoyer de Segonzac and Henri Le Fauconnier taught. He was able to devote himself full-time to art.
Cubism
"Csaky, after Archipenko, was the first sculptor to join the cubists, with whom he exhibited from 1911 on. They were followed by Duchamp-Villon [...] and then in 1914 by Lipchitz, Laurens and Zadkine." (Michel Seuphor)Robert Rosenblum, "Cubism", Readings in Art History 2, 1976, Seuphor, Sculpture of this Century, 29
The inspirations that led Csaky to Cubism were diverse,Article written by Joseph Csaky, Le Bulletin de la vie artistique, Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, 15 December 1924, pp. 507-509 as they were for artists of the Bateau-Lavoir, on the one hand, or the Puteaux Group on the other. While art historians are divided on the influence of African art in the distillation of Cubism, they generally agree that Cézanne's geometric syntax was significant, as well as Seurat's approach to painting. Given a growing dissatisfaction with the classical methods of representation, and the contemporary changes—the industrial revolution, exposure to art from across the world—artists began to transform their expression.
Archipenko and Csaky—along with the Cubist sculptors who would follow—stimulated by the profound cultural changes and their own experiences, contributed their own personal artistic language.
Csaky wrote of the direction his art had taken during the crucial years:
"There was no question which was my way. True, I was not alone, but in the company of several artists who came from Eastern Europe. I joined the cubists in the Académie La Palette, which became the sanctuary of the new direction in art. On my part I did not want to imitate anyone or anything. This is why I joined the cubists movement." (Joseph Csaky)
Early in his artistic career, Csaky had understood that Cubism was a great liberating force. It was a means of reassessing the nature of sculpture as a four-dimensional continuum, with space, mass, plane and direction, dynamic and changing in time. It represented for him the departure from classicism, from the conventions of his predecessors.
Csaky first met Picasso at the gallery of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. He had already met Guillaume Apollinaire but was never as close to either of them as to Archipenko, Henri Laurens, Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and Jean Metzinger. They often met at Henri Le Fauconnier's studio on rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, near the boulevard du Montparnasse, as well as with the Montjoie ! publisher Ricciotto Canudo, Café de la Rotonde and La Closerie des Lilas in Montparnasse.
Csaky exhibited his highly stylized 1909 sculpture, Tête de femme (Portrait de Jeanne), at the 1910 Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. The following year, he exhibited a proto-Cubist work entitled Mademoiselle Douell (1910).Félix Marcilhac, Joseph Csaky, Une Vie – Une Oeuvre, 23 Nov – 21 December 2007, exhibit catalogue, Galerie Félix Marcilhac
In 1911, Csaky exhibited his Cubist sculptures at the Salon des Indépendants (21 April – 13 June) with Archipenko, Duchamp, Gleizes, Laurencin, La Fresnaye, Léger, Picabia and Metzinger. This exhibition provoked an 'involuntary scandal' out of which Cubism, brought to the attention of the general public for the first time, emerged and spread throughout Paris and beyond. Four months later Csaky exhibited at the Salon d'Automne (1 October – 8 November) together with the same artists, in addition to Modigliani, Lhote, Duchamp-Villon, Villon and František Kupka.
The following year Csaky showed with the Cubists at the 1912 Salon des Indépendants (20 March – 16 May): with Archipenko, Gleizes, La Fresnaye, Laurencin, Le Fauconnier, Léger, Lhote, Zadkine, Duchamp, Constantin Brâncuși, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Robert Delaunay, Juan Gris, Piet Mondrian, Alfréd Réth, and Diego Rivera.
Csaky participated in the Salon d'Automne of 1912 (1 October – 8 November) with the Cubists: Duchamp, Duchamp-Villon, Gleizes, La Fresnaye, Le Fauconnier, Léger, Lhote, Marcoussis, Metzinger, Picabia, Villon and Kupka. A rare photograph of the 1912 Salon d'Automne shows Csaky's Groupe de femmes, a sculpture now lost, exhibited in front of Kupka's Amorpha: Fugue in Two Colours and next to sculptures by Amedeo Modigliani.Salon d'Automne, 1912 photograph showing Csaky's Groupe de Femmes (1911–1912) In the same photograph can be seen Henri Le Fauconnier's vast composition Les Montagnards attaqués par des ours (Mountaineers Attacked by Bears,) now at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum; and Francis Picabia's monumental La Source (The Spring), now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Csaky exhibited as a member of Section d'Or at the Galerie La Boétie (10–30 October 1912), with Archipenko, Duchamp-Villon, La Fresnaye, Gleizes, Gris, Laurencin, Léger, Lhote, Marcoussis, Metzinger, Picabia, Kupka, Villon and Duchamp.
By this time, Csaky's participation in the avant-garde milieu was complete.
1914–1918
"One could say that before the war, life in Paris had been like a summer day, and after the announcement of war the sky and life were darkened by weighty, heavy clouds" (Joseph Csaky)
Csaky enlisted as a volunteer in the French army and was expecting to be called in. Before joining his company, he married Marguerite Fétrié on 19 August 1914. She had become pregnant and had a child during their relationship, and Csaky wanted to become his daughter's legal father prior to his departure for what became known as World War I.
1918–1928