Untitled (verso: Drawing)
The Hungarian artist Béla Kádár visited Paris and Berlin during the 1910s, and in 1923, the year to which the present work in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza is usually dated, he was invited by Herwarth Walden to show his works at his gallery, Der Sturm. This brought him into contact with Katherine Dreier, who was to include him in the exhibitions of the Société Anonyme, which introduced European art to the United States during the 1920s. Although his painting was successively influenced by the Expressionist, Cubo-Futurist and Constructivist styles, Kádár was not as comfortable with the Constructivist languages as his fellow members of the Hungarian avant-garde. Both the present small watercolour and the drawing on the verso show that Kádár preferred to concentrate on themes from Hungarian folklore, tinged with the influence of Braque’s fluctuating post-war Cubism and the naïve style of Chagall.