The Big Ball (1930 körül)

Barta spent most of the 1920s abroad, and little of her early work is known. However, her return to Budapest in the late 1920s and early 1930s marked a turning point in her art. The earlier late Art Nouveau influences and naturalistic approach were replaced by a formal reductionism and stylization, and it was at this time that she began to make collages, which were linked in several ways to the progressive movements in European art of the early 20th century. The influence of Matisse's composition Dance (1910) can also be detected in the development of her formal language and colour scheme. Some of the collages recall the decorative colour patches of the great tempera and oil compositions, revisiting their brown-ochre-pale blue colour scheme. Yet they have a distinctly 1930s feel, with patterned silver-gold staniol paper glued to them. 

The collage, entitled The Big Ball, appearently explores a modern rite of passage, the theme of beaching, which is a perfect backdrop for this fragmented, schematic, stylised visual world. The interplay of colourful small paper cut-outs and "left blank" or homogeneous spaces of one colour gives the opportunity for total freedom of shaping. Without any toning or shading, Barta is able to create a sense of spatial depth by simply placing the colours in the right place. That there may be more to the picture than just an event of merry beach-goers and bathers is suggested by the angel winged figure in the middle of the picture, the figure holding a child (baptism?) in a red dress next to it, or the scene of a boat in the background.