BERÉNY Róbert
Budapest, 1887 – Budapest, 1953

Self-portrait with Straw Hat, 1906

In 1905 Róbert Berény, who would later become the youngest member of the Eight (Nyolcak) art movement, enrolled in the Académie Julian in Paris, and the very next year he exhibited at the Salon d’Automne. He painted Self-portrait with Straw Hat in October that year, which summarised all his experiments in painting he had carried out by that time.
The narrowly cropped bust follows the traditional type of self-portrait in which the artist gazes out of the painting in a self-conscious manner, although Berény was more concerned with the interaction between the colours of the blue background and the yellow book binding. The contrast formed by the dark waistcoat and the white shirt recalls older realist conventions, while the composition was influenced by Cézanne, and the use of colour reflects an awareness of works by the Fauvists. This early self-portrait paved the way for Berény’s later series of ironic portraits, which make use of elements from different modernist styles.