JOSEPH CSACKY (1888 1971)

Abstract composition
Watercolour and pencil on paper.
Signed lower right.
H_28.5 cm L_20.5 cm W_20.5 cm

Source: Modern Galerie, Munich

In the summer of 1908, he set off for Paris to pursue his career, arriving at the Gare de l'Est with 40 francs in his pocket and settling in Montparnasse, a Falguière town in the Necker district, with some Hungarian friends. In 1909 Csaky moved to La Ruche. Henri Laurens and Fernand Léger had just left, while Alexander Archipenko and Gustave Miklos were to join him in 1911. Csaky first exhibited in 1910 at the Salon de la Société nationale des beaux-arts (Tête de femme, Portrait de Jeanne).
In 1911, at the same Salon, he exhibited a portrait of Miss Douell. At the Salon d'automne, a few months later, he will present a Tête d'adolescent, the first self-portrait of a series that he was to develop up to the Tête cubiste of 1914, the stone of which is now in the collections of the Musée national d'art moderne (MNAM) centre Georges-Pompidou.
With Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, Francis Picabia, Constantin Brâncuși and Alexander Archipenko, Csaky participated in the Salon de la Section d'Or (1912). After the scandal caused by the Cubist room at the 1912 Autumn Salon where Csaky had exhibited Group of three women, he was no longer accepted to exhibit again. Csaky had successfully presented Figure habeas corpus at the Salon des indépendants in 1913. In 1914, in this same salon, Csaky exhibited Tête de femme and Tête d'homme in the most aggressive cubist volumes.
In 1914 Joseph Csaky joined the French army (regiment of foreign volunteers). His artistic production only resumed in 1919 after he had met Léonce Rosenberg, director of the Galerie de L'Effort moderne. In 1919, when he had already bought the plaster of Figure habillée (1913), Léonce Rosenberg offered Csaky an exclusive contract. Léonce Rosenberg saw in him a great Cubist artist whose works seemed to him to be highly original. As the exhibitions initiated by Rosenberg around his work became more and more successful, his works were acquired by major European and American collectors. Obtaining French nationality on 29 March 1922, József Csáky was led to Frenchize his name into Joseph Csaky, whom he would exhibit until the end of his life.
From 1923 onwards, Csaky simplified the forms to express only the lines of force of the model while geometralising them in a cubist interpretation, sculpted in stone or marble in order to accentuate their representative force. After 1924, wishing to work without constraints, Csaky did not renew his contract with Rosenberg. Nevertheless, the merchant will continue to promote Csaky's work through his review Le bulletin de l'Effort Moderne in which, over the years, a special place will always be reserved for his protégé's sculptures. From 1928 onwards, Csaky decided to break away from cubism and return to simplified figurative forms, focusing more specifically on the representation of women's bodies, whose voluptuous forms are covered with elegant geometrically developed drapes, updating their figurative interpretation. Presenting his new works at the Salon des Tuileries, he received a favourable reception from journalists, who encouraged his approach and wrote many articles about him in which his work was cited and appreciated by Waldemar George, a famous art critic who devoted an important monograph to him in 1930. Léonce Rosenberg continues to buy some of his latest figurative works from him to decorate his apartment, which René Herbst designed. In 1930, the Union of Modern Artists (U.A.M.) was created. Csáky, as a founding member, participates in their first exhibition at the Pavillon de Marsan, Musée des arts décoratifs de Paris. Next to him are works by Gustave Miklos, brothers Jean and Joël Martel, and Jean Lambert-Rucki, which are in a similar vein to his, appreciated by art critics and the public alike. Solicited by European galleries to come and present his works, Csaky is described in the foreign press as one of the best representatives of modern French sculpture. For the International Exhibition of Arts and Technology in Modern Life (Paris, 1937), Csaky was commissioned to carry out a number of monumental commissions for both the esplanade of the U.A.M. Pavilion and the interior of the Pavilion of Elegance or the exteriors of other buildings erected for the occasion. Csaky participates in the exhibition. The French State commissioned him to produce a bronze version of Figure dressed for the national collections.