Béla BIRKAS (1929-1973). "The Great Battle I",1962. Oil on canvas signed and dated lower right. Height 130 cm - Width 196 cm Provenance : Artist's studio Exhibition : - Galerie Transposition, Paris, "Birkas Peintures et aquarelles", January 8-26, 1965; - Institut Hongrois de Paris, Paris, "Béla Birkàs. Rétrospective", October 25-November 7, 2000. Note: "La Grande Bataille" (The Great Battle) appeared in Béla Birkas's first solo exhibition at Galerie Transposition, Paris, in 1965. This emblematic work with its evocative title, painted in 1962 on his return from his travels in Italy, transposes Paolo Uccello's "The Battle of San Romano" in Béla Birkas's own style. The painting that inspired him was the central panel entitled "Bernardino della Ciarda désarçonné", which illustrates the defeat of the Sienese against the Florentines. On one side the Sienese commander, on the other Niccolo da Tolentino, who unhorses him, in the center a chaotic melee of horsemen, spears and horses that Uccello, obsessed with perspective and detail, treats realistically. Although the subject is discernible, Béla Birkas transcribes these elements into a brilliant tumult of red standards, stormy skies and yellow splashes, creating a luminous space around a core of black shapes. In the words of art historian and critic Julia Cserba in 1975, "the two works have spiritual rather than visual links". But the sources from which the artist draws are multiple and eclectic. From his time in the USA in the '50s, he borrows the Expressionist touch, which he translates into contrasting, colorful patches; from his Hungarian roots, he adopts the violent richness of Gypsy folk music, which he transcribes through movement and a certain dynamism, suggested by the opposition of vertical and horizontal lines, broad brushstrokes and just-sketched drops of color. Despite the absence of drawing, the battle is evoked with an irresistible, lively force.