MÁRFFY Ödön
Budapest, 1878 – Budapest, 1959

The Old Customs House in Vác, 1910

Ödön Márffy – like many of his contemporaries – was greatly influenced by the years he spent studying in Paris. Even after returning to Hungary, he stayed in close contact with the artists he had met abroad. From 1908 onwards, he was a regular visitor at Károly Kernstok’s townhouse in Nyergesújfalu, a popular haunt for the progressive minds of the age as well as the members of the future Eight (Nyolcak) group of painters.
Márffy’s paintings combine vivid, fauvist colouring with strict pictorial structuring; this duality was remarked upon even by his contemporaries. The composition of the old customs house in V.c was painted from a raised perspective, and the masses of the building’s forms are conveyed in ochre-brown hues contoured with shades of green. The way the buildings are cut off, combined with the one-sided frame of the window in the foreground, gives a sense of momentariness, while the spatiality of the perspective lends the image its stability.