Apart from Munich, Berlin was the other major German city with which the art of János Mattis Teutsch, who himself came from the Transylvanian Saxon culture, was closely associated.¹ In the period following the First World War the democratic, cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Weimar Republic attracted many foreigners. The city became the focus not only of German, but also of foreign artistic life, as also of intellectual discussion and encounters.

From as early as 1910, this international openness was epitomised by the avant-garde periodical Der Sturm (The Storm), and the activities of its circle. (Fig. 1, Fig. 2.) The manager and editor of the journal was Herwarth Walden (1878–1941), who had originally studied musical composition and was an accomplished pianist, poet, essayist and columnist writing for a variety of papers. From 1912 onwards he also became a gallery owner, art manager and publisher. He had extremely varied interests, thanks in part to the eastern origins of his family: besides sharing the compulsory Parisian orientation of the Modernists, he kept up with artistic developments elsewhere in the world, including also (which is rare enough even today) those in Eastern Europe.

In keeping with his Bohemian life-style, Walden set up his first artistic society in the Café des Westens, this Verein für Kunst being largely a reflection of his personal tastes. Thanks to the contacts of his first wife, Else Lasker–Schüler (1869–1945), literary figures flocked to the circle, as well as musicians.² The most notable of these literati was the poet August Stramm, while in the fine arts it was Wassily Kandinsky who stood out, together with a number of kindred spirits, who were similarly preoccupied with the hidden harmonies of the human spirit. This circle played an increasingly important role in Weimar culture; in 1910 it gave birth to Der Sturm, first as a weekly and, from 1913, as a biweekly supplemented by much fuller visual arts material. From 1917 it was published monthly, while from 1924 it became a quarterly before reverting to being a cultural monthly again. Between 1929 and 1932 it slowly declined,³ but at the beginning its huge circulation of 30 000 and low price had assured its rapid success.⁴ Herwarth Walden’s wide range of activities including lecture tours, the aims of which ranged from the discovery of new talent to the promotion of the periodical, can be seen as a precedent for the activities of the cultural managers of the present day. He was able to draw inspiration from the similarly committed Austrian writer, Karl Kraus, editor of Die Fackel (The Torch) in Vienna, while another Austrian and a leading master of Austrian expressionism, Oskar Kokoschka, was an early collaborator.

The heyday of the journal, between 1912 and 1924, which is the most important period for us, owed much to the skilled assistance of Herwarth Walden’s second wife, the Swedish painter Nell Rosmund (1887–1975). Nell was Walden’s devoted partner, her roles ranging from secretary to protectress, and it was she who increasingly turned his attention towards the fine arts. Together they opened their own private gallery, which was the first to promote Expressionist, Futurist and Cubist art in Berlin. Later, thanks to Walden’s unrivalled organisational abilities, came other activities, such as the publication of books, portfolios and postcards, to which one could subscribe even from Budapest. He also organised the symposia known as ‘Wednesday Night’ meetings, and later even founded a private school for art and drama.

The members of Der Blaue Reiter Almanach, representatives of so-called musical expressionism, were invited to the first exhibition organised by Der Sturm in 1912, because Walden considered them most akin to his own spirit. His enthusiasm for the latest artistic achievements thus prompted him to invite a travelling exhibition from Munich organised by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, with the substantial participation of, amongst others, Gabriele Münter and August Macke. After this came exhibitions by the Italian Futurists, later the black and white graphics of the Munich artists, in October a Kandinsky show, in January (1913) Münter’s individual exhibition, and, in April, one by Marc, all of which events illustrated the close affinities of the Munich Blaue Reiter circle with the energetic new art-manager of Berlin.

Following the model of the Parisian salon des indépendents, Herwarth Walden organised the Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon (First German Autumn Salon) in September 1913. This had an international focus, including artists both from the West and the East. He soon became the conceptual propagandist of modern art, giving worldwide coverage of it from Budapest to Tokyo, and even keeping up with events in the United States. As a result of this commitment to Modernism, he spent a week in Budapest in January 1913, and was later to visit the city a number of times.⁵

In Budapest, the travelling exhibitions of 1912–1914, which were organised using the material of the artists of Der Blaue Reiter Almanach, took place following the January exhibition of the Futurists and Expressionists; the latter was considered an absolute novelty and led to the House of Art’s International Postimpressionist exhibition in May. In the exhibition organised in the National Salon in January 1913, besides the acclaimed pictures of the Futurists, Jawlensky showed two pictures and Kandinsky forty-five. Postcards published under the auspices of the Sturm propagated Futurist works of art (with the stamp of the National Salon on them), and were circulated in Budapest.

Walden took an active part in assembling the foreign material of the exhibition, which the press treated as an introduction to the Blaue Reiter circle.⁶ It is worth noting that the organiser of the Budapest exhibition, Miklós Rózsa, was also among those who signed the guest book of the Sturm Gallery.⁷ The foreign works were also shown in other places and can obviously be regarded as a kind of preview of the famous autumn salon of Berlin. Their effect on the fledgling Hungarian avant-garde generation is well known.⁸ Lajos Kassák, its leading light, visited the exhibition with Béla Uitz;"⁹ and since we have his preserved catalogue, we can be sure that János Mattis Teutsch also saw the show.

Apart from such exhibitions, Der Sturm itself, which published a series of articles by Kandinsky and was available also in Hungary, must have had a great influence on Mattis Teutsch. At any rate, the earliest copy known to have been owned by the artist dates from 1913. Moreover the basic aesthetic credo of Kandinsky, the initiator of lyrical abstract art in Munich, had become well-known from his treatise Über das Geistige in der Kunst (Concerning the Spiritual in Art – 1911), which was reprinted in German three times. János Mattis Teutsch treasured a signed copy throughout his life.¹⁰

A shared sensitivity linked Mattis Teutsch to the circle of Sturm, and without doubt the materials published in Berlin must have influenced him. The universal importance of rhythm now became the focus of Walden’s aesthetic, and he borrowed many of his ideas from the theories of Nietzsche, and later Kandinsky. Primarily due to the influence of the Futurists, he took music as his starting point, placing transmutable, pulsatory dynamics at the centre of his approach to the fine arts. This indeed represented a natural development of his synthesising concept of art.

Walden published works which were informed by the correspondence of macrocosm and microcosm in a modern artistic interpretation of the Heraclitean principal of phanta rhei, which in turn was based on the idea that the observer can live perfectly within the continuous movement of the universe. He was indeed inspired both by the scientific and the occult theories of the age. In contradistinction to the unified ethos of the periodical’s poets, the works of Franz Marc, Heinrich Campendonk, Gabriele Münter, Nell Walden, August Macke (Fig. 3.) and others remained autonomous, as did the abstract works of Kandinsky, since the reproductions in the periodical were not made subordinate to the text. By the same token, the "little worlds" of the images suggested the greatness of the whole, each in a different way according to the individual artist. As Lothar Schreyer wrote "The circle of Der Sturm was not a regular organisation, but a voluntary association of artist-friends, who shared a common approach to art."¹¹ However, the main path was determined until the 1920’s by the aesthetic tenets of Der Blaue Reiter Almanach,¹² and the artists of the Almanach did not owe any personal allegiance to Walden.

The Hungarian avant-garde became aware of this lyrical Expressionist art, with its international outlook, thanks to Der Sturm. Its leader, Lajos Kassák, was influenced by the German periodical both as a poet and as an editor, and his enthusiasm is indicated by the fact that he became the distributor of Der Sturm in Budapest.¹³ Initially it was probably also distributed in other towns such as Debrecen, Nagyvárad and Brassó. Unfortunately, we do not know of any observations made by Walden on his Hungarian visit; but we do know, from his speech opening a show in the Netherlands in 1916,¹⁴ that he directed the attention of artists to the changes observed in natural forces. He stressed phenomena such as constant flux, or the emission of energy from the sun, treating them not like a scientific analyst, but emphasising feelings and intuition instead of rationality. He propagated empathy and meditation, approaches which are derived from oriental notions of a healthy mind and body, in preference to the tenets of rational Western civilisation, which are rooted in the enlightenment. Ideas such as these were incorporated into Mattis Teutsch’s landscapes in the 1910s. Kassák recognised their quality and international timeliness in making Mattis Teutsch the most frequently published artist of the Budapest journal MA (1916–1919). (Fig. 4.) As a result of the carnage of the First World War, the rational socio-ethical point of view had inevitably lost a good deal of its attraction, and some of the Expressionists took refuge from a horrific reality in the abstract realm of metaphysics.¹⁵

The Hungarian avant-garde periodical, MA, was delivered regularly to the editorial office of Der Sturm in Berlin on an exchange basis. Herwarth Walden, who was known for discovering new talent, may have first come across this unknown Hungarian artist with a German-sounding name in this way. During the classic period of Der Sturm from 1917 to 1920,¹⁶ pacifist feelings reinforced an already existing tendency towards the nurturing of spiritual and intellectual values. Walden stressed the periodical’s international perspective as a way of deliberately opposing wartime restrictions, and did not care that the publication of material by non-Germans triggered official rebukes. However Der Sturm’s declining circulation inevitably led to growing financial difficulties. Walden was also increasingly affected by the loss of some of the artists belonging to the circle of the Blaue Reiter, for example the Russians, who were forced to leave Germany, and particularly Franz Marc, who was killed in the war. He decided to look for artists with a similar aesthetic and intellectual approach, but who were as yet unknown to the international public. It was in this way that he hit upon Mattis Teutsch’s works, which he obviously held in high esteem and began to publish them in his famed periodical in collaboration with the Hungarian journal MA.

During the war the publication of these two journals was extremely important. They acted as an intellectual discussion forum, keeping open the fragile lines of communication between cultures. The engravings that crossed the narrow borders of linguistic understanding became the graphic heralds of the new tendencies in art. This was at a time when the primary media were wood- and linocuts made by a process relief printing, together with a few manual impressions made by the artists themselves. In this way it was easy for the periodicals to propagate the new pictorial idiom by distributing a large number of printed works. (Fig. 5.)

According to our present knowledge, a Mattis Teutsch linocut appeared for the first time in the 1918/3 issue of Der Sturm (Fig. 6; Cat. L 32.). This was no ordinary landscape, but a composition based on abstract lines of energy. The wind-blown leafless trees, spearing up from the flow of the earth’s horizontal forces, are represented like a billowing sea, and symbolise the upward thrust of natural forces. In this way Mattis Teutsch manages movingly to evoke worldly struggle and violent action. A similarly symbolic and landscape-reducing, dynamic composition had appeared earlier in the February 25, 1918 issue of the Erdélyi Szemle (Transylvanian Review). (Fig. 7.)

Even more emblematic was a slightly similar composition, which first appeared as the frontispiece of the brochure advertising the 1917 matinée performance of MA (Today). Later, in the July 15, 1918 issue of MA (Cat. L 30.) it was to appear in print under a Chinese poem. The further progress of Mattis Teutsch’s art may be seen from the perfect symbiosis between man and tree that was achieved in the image for the cover of János Mácza’s "Book of Exercises for the Stage. I. Theatre 1918". For the ancient Chinese philosophers, the tree was the expressive symbol of man, while in the Indian Vedas it was a more general representation of the unconstrained life-force. This interpretation was reified in Expressionist art, which drew considerable inspiration from the Far East. Likewise Mattis Teutsch’s more suggestive and bold concentration of lines of force cannot simply be explained as the residual decorative line of art nouveau, but rather as the actualisation of a mysticism revolving around the earth and trees.

The linocut compositions, created with the energetic hand of a sculptor, were the most appropriate medium for the projection of Mattis Teutsch’s innermost feelings. Unlike Kandinsky, he never made a sketch before embarking on a graphic, nor does the application of water-colour, oil or knife reflect an ordered process in his works. Compositions made with different techniques, such as ‘Landscape in Red’ (Cat. P 36.), are rare. This work is a colour variant of the black and white cut, and appeared as a symbolic statement at a time of a growing threat to human existence. In addition to the opportunity afforded for the projection of dramatic emotions, which is a Hungarian idiosyncrasy, it was actually financial constraints which defined the technique of the work. That was actually why the cheaper linocuts, which were easier and more economic to produce, were usually preferred. And for exactly the same reason, the linocut favoured by artists between 1917 and 1920 gained a primary importance in Mattis Teutsch’s oeuvre.¹⁷

These artists took refuge from the realities of contemporary politics in the world of nature. Landscapes thus figure widely in early Modernism: they range in atmosphere from a Utopian or Arcadian tranquillity, which turns its back on history, through the impressionistic projection of experience, to an expressive vision of cosmic turmoil.

Mattis Teutsch’s trees can be linked to the last-named school, and may be perceived as ‘inner revelations’.¹⁸ In the depiction of the earth there is universal, and threatening movement, while in the trees may be discerned the struggle for human life. In Der Sturm, Kandinsky’s metaphysical abstractions, Marc’s man-evading symbolism drawn from the animal realm, and Schrimpf’s and Campendonk’s expressive woodcuts (which retained a figurative approach) all evoked the lyrical spirituality of der Blaue Reiter. János Mattis Teutsch’s art nouveau influenced style differs from theirs in that it is more symbolic, if also rougher, and more expressive. The origins of his idiosyncrasies lay both in the natural mysteries of the East Carpathian forests he knew from his homeland, and in the depths of human suffering he experienced after the premature death of his wife. These external and internal impulses brought about the characteristically Hungarian and dramatic expressiveness of his art, which at the same time contributed something unique to the internationally expressive style of the period.

The works most similar to Mattis Teutsch’s graphic were Jacoba van Heemskerck’s prints.¹⁹ Published in Der Sturm, these, at their most abstract, vividly evoked the linear energy of the land and its trees. (Fig. 8.) In the work of this Dutch artist, who for some time represented the spirit and aesthetic of Der Sturm as a teacher in her home country, the rhythmic black and white blocks of the surface gradually shifted towards a stylised abstraction more typical of the art of the Netherlands. The works of the Hungarian master were softer, more reflective and with a greater emotional charge. Der Sturm later published the most condensed variant of Mattis Teutsch’s various interpretations of the cosmic tree theme in September 1922 (Cat. L 34.). Here, an unfathomable white depth forms a sphere through contrast with the darkness of the boughs. Its effect is almost as mystical in this graphic as is that of the yellow distance embedded in dynamically coloured and poetically contrasted green-lilac lines of nature, which evokes the boundless universe in the strange oil-painting of an identical composition entitled Yellow Landscape (Cat. P 35.). This seems to follow Kandinsky’s idea that green, when mixed with yellow, loses its equipoise and reveals an energy reminiscent of the unlimited dynamics of the universe.²⁰

In 1918, the imagery of Der Sturm, which had turned increasingly to abstract compositions, closely reflected the editor-in-chief’s theories about the central role of rhythm. This dynamic quality, which was inherited from the Italian Futurists, became a recurrent feature of German Expressionism, displaying spiritual energy in visual form. Graphics played a central role in exploiting the idea of rhythm; it became characteristic of the imagery appearing in Der Sturm and also made a strong impression on artists in Central Europe.²¹

Wood- and linocuts, which had clear contours and operated with large forms, were perfectly suited to these tendencies, which may be seen typically in the abstract compositions of some of the Sturm artists (Oswald Herzog, Hugo Händel (Fig. 9.), Arnold Topp); on the other hand, the graphics of some other artists associated with the periodical retained a summarising and simplifying figurativeness (conspicuous, for example, in the work of Maria Uhden and her husband, Georg Schrimpf).

Oswald Herzog’s and Johannes Molzahn’s variants of abstract Expressionism,²² which were also printed in Der Sturm, proclaimed the purity of objectless creation. Inner experience, formal representation of Bergson’s "élan vital", and the artist’s exercise of free will in a Nietzschean sense, all these notions were brought together in their works by means of rhythmic effects. Many critics, among them Ernõ Kállai,²³ have misinterpreted such pictures as purely formal exercises in rhythm. They fail to see that the aesthetics of Der Sturm are at play in the background, that the perfect harmony of the spiritual work is externally inspired, but radiates from within. The Sturm artists are here propagating the defining value of primary inner experience and thus following in the footsteps of Der Blaue Reiter Almanach; they are proclaiming that "artistic feeling, the vibration of the soul," as it occurs in music, is the determining artistic factor in their work.²⁴ We should not forget that Mattis Teutsch himself played a musical instrument, as did Kandinsky, while his wife was a professional pianist.

Without the influence of Der Sturm, Mattis Teutsch’s graphic style would probably not have become more and more abstract. The architectonic mountain ranges of his motherland, the landscape of Brassó, together with its softly harmonious natural forms, twisting lines of plant or tree roots and wind-blown trees all were woven together in a way that certainly reflected the general tendency of Der Sturm. His close attachment to the scenery of nature saved him from schematising or degrading the rhythm of his pictures to mere intellectual play; at the same time, he was thus also protected from the eruptive exaggeration, the intensifying of dynamic features to the point of ecstasy, which characterised the visionary doomsday pictures of Ludwig Meidner (who also hailed from East) and his company known as Die Pathetiker.²⁵

It was probably in recognition of this that Walden in August 1918, for the second time chose the picture on the cover of Mattis Teutsch’s 1917 Linoleum Album (Fig. 10.) as the frontispiece of Der Sturm. (Fig. 11.)²⁶ The depth of a crater and the height of a mountain here signify oppositional extremes; and in the area between them, all is vertiginous movement. The work presents an apocalyptic view of man, who is seen fleeing into the realms of cosmic phenomena, a kind of universal contemporary vision, apparently suggested by the image of falling bombs. "Expressionism is not a fashion, it is an ideology. And it is an ideology of the inner senses, not of concepts: a view of the world in its wholeness, of that world of which the earth comprises merely a part."²⁷ These not untypical notions of Walden were here subsumed in the images of Mattis Teutsch’s graphics.

It is not known whether these linocuts arrived in Berlin along with the delivery of MA or separately. It is sure, however, that János Mattis Teutsch visited Walden in the summer of 1918.²⁸ Not only was he attracted to the artistic entrepreneur by a shared aesthetic viewpoint, but he could also hope for support and international recognition through Der Sturm. "I started to work and exhibit with the ‘Sturm’ in 1918; the ‘Sturm’ was then synonymous with the new artist and the new art. Walden’s own collection was unique, encompassing Expressionism in all its aspects; besides Russian Expressionists such as Sagal [sic], Jawlensky and Kandinsky, he lured most of the available artists of the continent to work for him and organised exhibitions for them throughout the world."²⁹ A note made by the editor-in-chief in December, which records the arrival of a parcel, testifies to the intensifying relationship between Mattis Teutsch and Walden. The parcel undoubtedly contained engravings, since in Vol. IX, No. 1. of Der Sturm the following note appears: "Signed and numbered copies of all prints published in Der Sturm are available for sale."

In this way the possibility, at least, of international fame opened up for János Mattis Teutsch. There was an artistic two-way traffic at that time between the avant-garde journals of Budapest and Berlin, and Mattis Teutsch could take advantage of that. In Budapest, Franz Marc’s works appeared twice on the frontispiece of MA.³⁰ (Fig. 2.) Further reproductions appearing in MA and Der Sturm also increased Mattis Teutsch’s fame as an idiosyncratic Hungarian artist (Cat. L 25, Cat. L 17).³¹ His graphic can be interpreted as expressing a clearly intuitive and spiritual world-view; on the other hand, the early Hungarian literary material to be found in Der Sturm is indicative only of its links to the circle of the literary journal Nyugat (West). That periodical was translated into German by Henrik Horvát (1877–1947) of Kolozsvár, and later by the Germany-based Stephan J. Klein (1894–1960).³²

Mattis Teutsch’s personal connection with the Sturm group continued with his visits to Berlin, which took place in the summers during the school holidays. On June 11, 1920, he wrote to his editor and friend, Zoltán Bálint: "I am invited to Berlin immediately … I am expecting a lot from this trip..., and I am going to visit Vienna too."³³ It was around this time that he became a member of a left-wing art group called the Novembergruppe, which also included the artists of Der Sturm. Later, other Hungarian artists, such as Róbert Berény and László Péri, also joined the group. Mattis Teutsch’s poems, inspired by the poets of Der Sturm, were published in the international journal Atys with the help of the Novembergruppe. Atys was printed in Rome, where the production costs were lower, and in 1920 Mattis Teutsch had a linocut published in it.

Unfortunately, Mattis Teutsch did not appear in the graphics exhibition of the Sturm in October 1920,³⁴ but he did begin planning for his participation in a future exhibition, eventually showing six works in the July-August 1921 show at the Gallery.³⁵ Walden demonstrated his regard for Mattis Teutsch’s work by putting his name on the cover of the catalogue, next to that of Paul Klee. (Fig. 12.) In the collective exhibition (Gesamtschau) which was linked to this, the best of the abstract Expressionists, such as William Wauer, Nell Walden, Georg Muche, Johannes Molzahn, Jacoba van Heemskerck and Rudolf Bauer, were featured with a selection of between two and six works each. Biller Vjera from Southern Hungary, who was already known from the January 1919 graphics exhibition of MA, also exhibited at this show. The international ethos of the group was demonstrated by the presence of Archipenko, Chagall, Gleizes and Marcoussis, with their somewhat differently oriented works. Komposition 36 was placed amongst the vast amount of material shown at the 100^th Jubilee Exhibition (Fig. 13.), while Compositions 27 and 35 appeared at the 110^th exhibition in August 1922, which indicates that up to that time they had not found a buyer. (Fig. 14.) Unfortunately, Nell Walden, who was buying pictures every month, did not collect the paintings of Mattis Teutsch; possibly she regarded the works of the Brassó master as too close to her own style and therefore, in a sense, in competition with her own work.³⁶

The rich red and yellow, or green and blue cascades of colour in Nell Walden’s esoteric pictures, which were increasingly featured both in collective and individual exhibitions, gradually began to make a significant impact on the Sturm circle. The artistic group around the periodical was in constant flux, but a particular Berliner version of the intellectual internationalism that was then so fashionable began to take shape around the Waldens. Increasingly, they turned their attention to the East. Europe, shaken by the war, was looking for possible answers to questions left unsolved by the rational scientific approach of the West, and seeking them in the philosophies of the Far East, especially in Taoism.³⁷ The mystical Weltanschauung of the East, which seemingly found a way of coming to terms with the universe, and its tradition of intuitive understanding, were to be interpreted as counterpointing Western technological civilisation. New translations of Oriental philosophy now saw the light of day across Europe. For example, there were several translations of Lao-Tse’s book, Tao-Te-King.³⁸ Those who had become sickened by Western politics were looking for an intellectual rebirth in the East, which offered a profound personal tranquillity engendered by a feeling of unity between the self and the world. Walden himself acknowledged and inspired the orientation of modern artists towards the East: "The West excites them, but they look to the East for a rejuvenating impetus."³⁹ As for Mattis Teutsch, he is known to have read the teachings of Lao-Tse, and indeed designed a title page and a linocut for one of his works.⁴⁰

These Oriental ideas brought with them a new vocabulary of forms for Mattis Teutsch. As he retreated from the chaos of the world into art, strange nest-shaped compositions began to appear in his art, projections of essential life protected in a womb-like closure. (Cat. L 51, Cat. L 52) These works, made between 1919–1921, can be interpreted as offshoots of Oswald Herzog’s manifesto, Abstract Expressionism,⁴¹ in which he juxtaposed child-bearing with the abstract creation of form. Here are to be found symbols of the pure creative force emerging from chaos, avatars of spiritual strength and resolution. This was an art reflecting a creative sensibility that hovered between the mysticism of the cosmos and that experienced by the individual; borrowing from the ideas of Adolf Hölzel and his disciples,⁴² art is conceived as a special vehicle for expressive compositions, the latter deriving their intensity from the revelation of an inner rhythm and the dynamics of light and shadow. Closest to Mattis Teutsch’s art were Hans Arp’s dark compositions conveying the uninterrupted metamorphosis of body and soul in an abstract, oval form, (they were made in Ascona, mostly from 1917 onwards, works such as these were heavily imbued with the ideas of Rudolf Steiner.⁴³

Mattis Teutsch had planned the publication of his linocuts and poems in the Viennese edition of MA under the title "Gedichte, Schnitte." (Cat. L 42, Cat. L 43, Cat. L 44, Cat. L 45, Cat. L 46, Cat. L 47, Cat. L 48, Cat. L 49, Cat. L 50.) However this plan miscarried. His poems were not considered to have attained the exacting standard of expressive "word-art" represented by MA and Der Sturm, as is indicated by the fact that it was Andor Simon’s poems which were published with some of the artist’s linocuts in Vienna in 1921. (Cat. L 45, Cat. L 49.)⁴⁴ Mattis Teutsch had already hand-drawn one of his abstract, nest-like compositions in his first MA catalogue, and into a copy of the journal itself, the one in which Lajos Kassák’s poem "Nyár-orcheszter" (Summer-orchestra) in praise of the cosmos was published.⁴⁵ Der Sturm, in turn, published Mattis Teutsch’s linocuts alongside poems by Arp. (Fig. 25.)

Following the revolutions at the end of the war, intellectual debate had begun to focus on ideas such as the necessity for empathy with the cycle of life and harmony between man and the cosmos. Allied to these notions was a preoccupation with spiritual experience, in opposition to acts of violence. For example, in the course of his debate with Adolf Behne, Walden exclaimed: "Revolution is not art. But art is revolution."⁴⁶ In this way he channeled the interests of artists, who were sickened by politics, onto an intellectual plane, instead of directing them towards the engaged, agitprop of the age. In the post-war and post-revolutionary situation, he saw in art a vital contemporary role in the nurturing of spiritual culture.

At the beginning of the 1920s, the rising number of exiles from Hungary resulted in the work of more and more Hungarians appearing in the pages and exhibitions of Der Sturm,⁴⁷ together with Germans, French and Russians. Mattis Teutsch’s prints now appeared alongside pictures going well beyond the abstract Expressionism that had previously been championed by the periodical. (Cat. L 8.)⁴⁸ This new artistic wave from Eastern Central Europe was heralded by an article written by László Moholy-Nagy and Alfréd Kemény, entitled "The Constructive Dynamic System of Forces," and by the linocuts of Lajos Kassák, Sándor Bortnyik and László Péri (Fig. 28, Fig. 29, Fig. 30, Fig. 32, Fig. 33.). Cumulatively this amounted to a formidable creative Hungarian contribution to the international avant-garde.⁴⁹

This was also a decisive turning point for Der Sturm, on which the constructive approach of Péri and Moholy-Nagy had a significant influence. Looking at the graphics of the periodical at that time, it can be seen that universal and emotionally rich compositions were being displaced by geometric, abstract ones which very broadly reflect the diversity of the world, yet seek to impose order, an order that also suggests a utopian perspective. The most interesting examples are Moholy-Nagy’s linocuts, which began appearing from 1923. (Fig. 30, Fig. 33.) The Hungarian master, who progressed from the circle of Der Sturm to be a teacher of the Bauhaus, created a number of unique graphics, whose theme was the positing of order in the context of limitless space. These works suited the changed image and focus of the journal, and represented graphic variations on so-called glass architecture. "The inner élan of the Expressionist experience is eruptive and erratic; it wanders in endless and featureless spheres. The directional changes of the constructive life are bound to each other as a balanced and articulated system of continuity",⁵⁰ wrote Ernõ Kállai of this change. These primarily aesthetic experiments with form aimed at the abstract pictorial representation of the future in a purified world, replacing Expressionism’s preoccupation with universal chaos. Some of the prints, entitled Punkt und Linie zur Fläche (Point and Line to the Surface) harmonised with Kandinsky’s Bauhaus principles. In all probability this publication was also known to Mattis Teutsch.

Be that as it may, he was certainly greatly influenced by this change in the direction of Modernism. He too strove, albeit with different means, to meld the expressive with the geometric. The abstract dynamics of the riders in Der Blaue Reiter still haunt his work, but the principle of the constructive system of mechanical force, as advocated by Moholy-Nagy, seems to invade here, too. Mattis Teutsch’s spiral compositions were created at this time and have many variants, from the first mooting of the problem in a sketchbook (Cat. D 26.), to the oil-painting with a red base (Cat. P 110.) published by Der Sturm as a linocut (Cat. L 54.).⁵¹ The biomorphic forms featured in a bold, diagonal and dynamic construction can be interpreted as signs of new life bursting from the caul. The ineffable inner force, the presence of which stressed the integrity of the organism in itself, achieved a more doctrinaire form in the "action" of vertically constructed compositions (see, for example, the composition Blue Rider published in Der Sturm two months later.)⁵² (Fig. 24.) Larger painted versions of this are also known (Cat. P 124.), and can be interpreted (based on their titles, at least) as homage to great inspirational genius. Compared to the more dynamic oil preludes (Cat. P 105, Cat. P 106.), and the other Sturm engravings, they are organised more rigidly, implying a crystallisation of creative principles built around the opposition of the horizontal and the vertical. They present a schematically interpreted dichotomy of stillness and movement, or, in other words, a strictly theoretical attempt to realise the tenets of Kunstideologie. The variations of these compositions effectively summarise the contextual reciprocity of János Mattis Teutsch and the artists of Der Blaue Reiter and Der Sturm, but they are also the first signs of his artistic progress.

In the year of the worst inflation (1923), Herwarth Walden concentrated even more on the small countries of Central and Southern Europe. In the 1910’s he had only discovered the Cubists in Czechoslovakia and János Mattis Teutsch from Hungary. By 1923 the László Péri’s linocut portfolio of geometric space-compositions was being published by Der Sturm, at a time when Mattis Teutsch could only dream about having an individual publication devoted to him. He lived to see Moholy-Nagy, Péri, Aurél Bernáth, and especially Béla Kádár and Hugó Scheiber, become Walden’s favorite artists.

Nevertheless 1923 was the year when his work appeared most frequently at exhibitions in Berlin. In February, Empfindung (Sense) 16 was shown in the collective show, while at the 116^th exhibition it was associated with work by László Moholy-Nagy and László Péri. His Composition 12 appeared at the 118^th show, and at the 119^th exhibition he entered two works: Composition 36 and Zuneigung (Affection). In October, at the 124^th exhibition, he was again present, this time in the company of the geometric abstract artist Friedrich Burger-Mühlfeld from Hanover, the Bauhaus graduate Hans Hoffenrichter, and Edmund Kesting, who founded a school in Dresden. It is possible that some of the Empfindung pictures by Mattis Teutsch got into the Gesamtschau of the 125^th and 126^th exhibitions in November and December. (Unfortunately, it is not possible to identify the pictures shown. The German word ‘Empfindung’ contains both the idea of ‘sense’ and of ‘feeling,’ so the content of the pictures can only be conveyed with precision in their German title). At the 139^th exhibition in March 1925, probably the same picture appeared again; moreover this time the individual shows featured works by the constructivist László Moholy-Nagy, and by Hugó Scheiber, a man of the 1920’s with a decorative style that put lyrical abstraction in the shade.

1923 was therefore a year when Hungarians (including Mattis Teutsch) predominated in Der Sturm. The artist himself had looked forward to his customary summer trip, which had been a regular feature since 1921; but this time it was with a view to permanent emigration.⁵³ What really happened in Berlin is still unclear. It is known that he lived there for a while with his wife and,⁵⁴ misjudging the situation, joined the Reichswirtschaftsverband Bildender Künstler Deutschlands in the hope of having more outlets for his work.⁵⁵ But it is not known whether general economic hardship, or the fundamental change of course in modern art (and so also in Der Sturm), which was intimately linked to the final phase of Expressionism, made him return home. It is also not known when he and his wife returned to Brassó, but the artist nevertheless did not give up hope in regard to Berlin. At the beginning of 1924 he was planning to travel with an exhibition from Budapest through Vienna and Magdeburg to the German capital.⁵⁶ His linocut album of six pages may have been a preparation for this tour.⁵⁷ (Cat. L 56, Cat. L 57, Cat. L 58, Cat. L 59.) The red and blue, yellow and blue, and red and orange colours, which were now added to the black and white linocuts, were designed primarily to serve the purposes of the art trade. After the short boom of Constructivism, the influence of Art Deco was becoming more evident even in Der Sturm.

Mattis Teutsch’s regular trips to Berlin in the interests of maintaining international connections involved considerable financial sacrifice.⁵⁸ Nevertheless internationalism was not only the preserve of the avant-garde, but was important for the Transylvanians in other ways. The leading light of the Transylvanian Literary Society was one of those who drew attention to this, observing that "for Transylvanians, establishing a national future is only possible when we acknowledge the current intellectual tendencies in the world and adapt to them."⁵⁹ By the same token it was vital that Mattis Teutsch’s two oil-paintings should, with the help of Der Sturm appear at the international exhibition of modern art in Düsseldorf in 1922,⁶⁰ and at the show of Western art in Moscow in 1926.

While the artist also showed some interest in Bauhaus, it was his fellow-countryman and avant-garde artist, Sándor Bortnyik, who provided him with the most relaxed friendship, and whom he subsequently visited in Weimar.⁶¹ Other acquaintances were Paul Klee and (among the constructivists and functionalists) László Moholy-Nagy. At the end of the 1920’s, his fellow Brassovian, Henrik Neugeboren (Henri Nouveau), may have brought to his notice the changing ideas of the Bauhaus, which were potentially alien to Mattis Teutsch in view of the their close correlation with politics. Nonetheless various theoretic aspects of the movement were to influence him, including the schematic treatement of the human figure, Bauhaus stage design, Kandinsky’s teaching on the point and the line, the theory of pictorial structure whereby the horizontal is equated with cold, the vertical with warmth, and finally the harmony of compositions that is based nonetheless on contradictory elements.

From Berlin, the heart of Central Europe, or what Walden called "the capital of the United States of Europe", the artistic entrepreneur cast his net widely. Polish, Romanian, later Serb, Croatian, Slovenian and Bulgarian artists all appeared in his Berlin periodical of Der Sturm. But German ties towards the neighbouring countries also strengthened. That Mattis Teutsch’s compositions, along with the consolidation of his Romanian connections, had begun to develop in a certain way is illustrated by his contribution to the fourth issue (1925) of De Driehoek, the most important Belgian avant-garde periodical.⁶² He went on to create an abstract bird (the Red Rooster) for Contimporanul, which was then published in the June 1925 issue of Der Sturm. (Fig. 26.)⁶³ His outstanding, and strongly Hungarian-influenced, graphic tour de force consisted of twelve individual pages, again reproduced in the renowned German journal, which printed them as counterpoint to a more balanced composition that locked arched elements into geometric forms. (Fig. 27.)

From 1924, under the leadership of William Wauer, the abstract expressionists of Der Sturm established the group known as Die Abstracten (consisting of Buchholz, Herzog, Kesting, Nerlinger, Segal, Schwitters and Nell Walden), which Mattis Teutsch also joined. (Fig. 34.)⁶⁴ At the Great Berlin Exhibition of 1928, the Sturm artists participated only under the umbrella of this group, which was devoid of any of the commercial trappings of the art trade. This was seen as the main event of the year, and one in which the most outstanding representatives of the avant-garde took part. For his part, Mattis Teutsch had visited Berlin in 1927,⁶⁵ when he made friends with the critic Otto Brattskoven. The latter saw in him a master of abstraction, but one who was living on the periphery of mainstream culture, whose pictures were created far from the main artistic centres and the throbbing life of the city, and who (perhaps for this reason) was liable to become a prisoner of rigid theorising.⁶⁶

Mattis Tetsch’s 1926 picture entitled Onward (Cat. P 137) was shown in Berlin and clearly demonstrates his altered style: two abstract blue figures in front of vertical levels of colour make up a composition aimed at achieving an intellectual grasp of human existence.⁶⁷ According to the catalogue of the 1928 Great Berlin Exhibition, at which Malevich’s pictures were the greatest sensation, five of Mattis Teutsch’s new type of pictures were shown.⁶⁸ (Fig. 35.) "I exhibited here with the Abstrakte Gruppe and I have good connections with the A bis Z group. But while graphic artists and painters like Franz W. Seiwert, Heinrich Hoerle and Gert Arntz dominate the group, which is rather similar to the Bauhaus, the main objective of their art is likely to remain activism for the social revolution, or the picturesque representation of concrete and relativised phenomena, while for my part, I perceive man to be dominant, rather than phenomena."⁶⁹

Mattis Teutsch’s approach was therefore only tangentially relevant to the agitprop circle of The Progressives led by Franz Wilhelm Seiwert. The representatives of so-called political Constructivism,⁷⁰ who were left-wing (as was Mattis Teutsch himself), but far more militant than he was, were concerned to convey specific messages with their agitprop works. Mattis Teutsch, meanwhile, was searching for something purely general in his schematised figures: "I do not intend to reflect in my painting the individual physiognomic man, but rather mankind seen as a unified phenomenon in respect of its deeper and more stable forms."⁷¹ At a time of burgeoning racism, he aimed at the intellectual and pictorial formulation of a "man type" or model of mankind, probably conceived in direct opposition to racist ideas. It should be mentioned that this was also the period of the new materialism; however, instead of Greek classicism, Mattis Teutsch chose to follow Egyptian and Far Eastern traditions.

One may summarise his position by saying that, instead of an expression of individual sentiments, he took refuge in a general canon of forms, as did many of the avant-gardists. At a time when art was extremely practice-oriented, János Mattis Teutsch, who earned his living from teaching, was also able to publish his artistic credo with a famous German publishing house, and this despite strong international competition.⁷² The credo was heavily influenced by the theoretical writings of Kandinsky, Klee and Seiwert.

Responding to the challenges of the age, and in an attempt at practical realisation of his artistic theories, he now turned to mural painting and away from canvases, although in fact he failed to obtain any concrete assignments. The figurative change in his individual style was due to German influence, but was nevertheless outside the ambit of Der Sturm,⁷³ which journal entered a period of decline from the middle of the 1920s. Its content evoked expressionist principles that were now old hat, and there was a good deal of recycling. At the same time, its illustrations became more lifeless and commercialised.

Besides Seiwert’s American experiences, the periodical gave an opening to Walden’s propagandist writings about the Soviet Union. However in the issue of Der Sturm that was published on the 50^th birthday of its editor, one looks for Mattis Teutsch’s name in vain. Lajos Kassák and Hugó Scheiber sent their congratulations from Budapest, and the names of other scattered Hungarians such as Kállai, Péri and Béla Kádár, were registered in the list of the attendees. In the last phase of the journal, the Hungarian connection was mostly represented by the pictures of apprentice avant-gardists, such as Scheiber and Kádár, who gravitated towards decorative and fabulous compositions.

So far as is known, the last postcard to Mattis Teutsch in Brassó was dated March 19, 1929 (Fig. 19.) and sent from the editorial office, which had already relocated from Potsdamer Platz. On the eve of the great historical change in 1932, the journal, which had appeared ever more infrequently and now without reproductions, was discontinued. The last issue, Vol. XXXI, No. 3., protested against the Macedonian terror.

The exhibitions of Der Sturm had ended in 1928. In Mattis Teutsch’s own oeuvre, sculptural activity was by then already gaining more emphasis, but he never showed any plastic work in the Sturm Gallery. In 1931, however, he exhibited ten of his new sculptures at the Ferdinand Möller Galerie in Berlin. During the depression, due to his limited financial means, the man who was now Brassó’s leading painter, graphic artist and sculptor spent his summers in the artists’colony at Nagybánya (Baia-Mare), instead of in Berlin as hitherto. His art remained idiosyncratic and strange, and the transcription of natural sights still dominated in it. However the Nagybánya landscape hardly seems to have inspired him. One notable exception is his painting Bányában (In the Mine), in which the vertical, energised forces of the picture are constrained by red and blue elements of space. Transylvania, his motherland, had now enveloped the artist in an unsought and imperceptible protective veil, as he endured the long years of his international isolation in the 1930s.

Notes
Figures