Totem dance (1931)

One of the main themes of Mária Barta's oil paintings from the 1930s is the rituals and totem dances of primitive, ancient cultures. One of the most identifiable sources of this is Henri Matisse's painting Dance from 1910. It can be assumed that, like other artists of her time, she was influenced by the dance and movement of the period. Her figures with raised arms are reminiscent of the posture of Elza Kövesházi Kalmár's sculptural figure the Breathing Dance (c. 1928). Józsa Járitz and Erzsébet Korb, among others, also made paintings on this theme. The most common motifs in Barta's works belonging to this group are: the stylised, impersonal, reverent figure with raised arms, or his companion whose legs seem to end in a palm tree, the enlarged body parts (hands, eyes), masks, amorphous light beams. Her method is based on repetition, on the interplay of positive and negative forms, on the collision of open and closed forms. The majority of her compositions are centric, even hierarchical, with the central object, fetish or totem being the object of worship.