The self-portrait was one of the major artistic forms of the younger generation of artists. "So many students of the academy, so many transfigured idealist artists compete for the 'nimbus' of the extraordinary in Budapest. (...) with or without a Rembrandt-cap, showing the whole or only half of the body, buttoned up to the chin or stripped to the waist, with bursting muscles, in provoking pride; in postures fit for the interior or dominating the limitless space of free nature and seeking satisfaction in the monumental," wrote Ernő Kállai in 1925 on the self-portrait cult of that epoch. Their works of varied tone and style often followed the patterns of earlier art, but their direct forerunners are again found among the Youths. Szőnyi painted his large Self-Portrait in 1919. The archetype of his bowed figure with hanging head appeared in a painting of two years earlier: Szőnyi might well have known Péter Dobrovics's actor portrait, as the reproduction of that picture displayed at the exhibition of the Youths in 1917 was published in the Art magazine. The figure of the artist wearing a Lavalliére-tie might bring to mind the figure of Tibor Idrányi sunk deeply in his thoughts and wearing a similar attire in Aba-Novák's painting made in the same year as Szőnyi's. The sketch-drawing of the Self-Portrait so full of vigour shows already the final setting, while in the painting Szőnyi places his figure in a landscape complemented with red drapes that emphasize agelessness, and a nude woman that - as an attribute for the artistic profession - commonly reappears in the self-portraits of other artists as well. The words of Ernő Kállai on the artistic representation of 'pathetic consciousness' that found its expression in the Hungarian painting of the twenties apply to Szőnyi's Self-Portrait, too: "the form constricted to individual plasticity in the perspective space and glorified in its compact material reality is the means of expression for unrestricted individualism".
Erzsébet Korb's painting is also a self-portrait positioned in a landscape environment. The portrait photograph on the artist shows the process of how the artist is eventually transformed, how she 'dresses up into' her selected role. The self-portrait depicted in ascetic rigour suggests the ideal of a lonely artist working as someone with a call for religious, monastic life. The sunrays pouring down from above wraps the indifferent female figure in a halo, and behind her fully-outlined upper body there is a stylised townscape background, a box-like building compound: "the external world is a stage scenery on which the outlines of her ego is drawn up characteristically". While an earlier - latent - self-portrait of Korb's follows conventional patters depicting the artist with a palette and brush, in this painting of hers the features of her face are hard and masculine, her dark jacket and tilted head resembles an early self-portrait of Patkó. On the other hand the artificial gesture in Károly Patkó's latent painting of 1921 is an imitation of the characteristic hand position of the figure on the left hand side of Korb's Alter ego. And the pathetic, theatrical gestures can be observed in Patkó's Study of the same year. A much more dynamic, but nonetheless affected example of such impersonation and affectation is seen in one of Péter Dobrovics's early self-portrait entitled Worker. Imre Nagy's painting from 1925 is a relatively late example of the 'thrown back head, parted lips' type of self-portraits. Here the most light is shed not on the artist's face, but instead on the muscular arch of his neck, just as in Szőnyi's Self-Portrait of 1921. Imre Nagy attended the class of Viktor Olgyai at the Academy of Fine Arts in the twenties, then he returned to his birthplace, Csíkzsögöd, Transylvania (now in Romania) for good in 1924 and here his art - probably due to his isolation - preserved or rather conserved the style of the Szőnyi group for a long time.
In Aba-Novák's shadow-hidden Self-Portrait made in 1920 the hands are not moving upwards implying activity, instead the hand held in front of the chest bends passively downward. Similar self-portraits can be found also among the works of the Youths, for example one of Kmetty's painting from 1913. One of the costume-pieces of the self-portraits of the Szőnyi group used with some predilection was the variety of headwear. The conventional attribute of painting art, and the artist profession, the beret appears in the works of many painters, and Aba-Novák's Bereted Self-Portrait might have been inspired by the Fritz Burger book entitled Cézanne und Hodler that inspired his other pictures as well, as the illustrations volume of this book contains drawings made in imitation of Rembrandt and Joos van Cleve's bereted male portraits. One of István Szőnyi's latent self-portraits is known from an old photograph showing the artist looking into a mirror, standing in front of his easel.
Another example for the slanted incoming beam of light and the use of an out-of-the-ordinary headwear is Károly Patkó's Turbaned Self-Portrait. The cloth wound around the head also appears in an etching in the same year. The highfaluting pose and artificial hand-hold of the latent self-portrait of one year earlier has disappeared in this artwork and a timeless peace and internal composedness similar to Aba-Novák's style take the place of the passionate tone. Self-portraits of similar settings and characteristics were not uncommon for the Youths, but just like in the case of Dobrovics, in Kmetty's Self-Portrait facing the viewer with a stern look the painter's attire is not an old-time costume but a casual dress. The blue shades characteristic of Kmetty have a significant role also in the early Patkó pictures, but the intensive colours contrasted with pronounced blues in the paintings of the Belvedere exhibition begin to be replaced by a warmer greenish-brown monochrome feature.
Many of the members of the Szentendre colony of artists founded in 1928 started their careers with a low-keyed neoclassic period at the beginning of that decade. One of them is Ernő Jeges who as one of the founders of the Bicske colony put his pictures on display in the National Salon at the beginning of 1922, and co-exhibited with Aba-Novák, among others, in the group exhibition of the Ernst Museum held in the autumn of that year. This is where his painting entitled Self-Portrait in Red Hat was put on show. Here his statue-like figure stands out against the stormy background as a dark mass. The picture's setting and style makes it resemble the artworks of the members of the Szőnyi group who were a few years older, but the painting of renaissance taste could pass for a distant descendant of the neoclassic self-portraits of Giorgio de Chirico of similar physiognomy as well. The costumed self-portraits however may not imply a direct style-link to the art of ages past. A reproduction of Ludomir Slendzinski's Self-Portrait was made by the Magyar Muvészet (Hungarian Art) on the occasion of the grandiose Polish art exhibition organised in Budapest in 1928, and this artwork is an example of the cool and hard classic imitation emerging later in Hungarian painting also. Its closest related artwork is Jenő Medveczky's Self-Portrait of 1929.
Two members of the etcher generation, primarily known as graphic artists, painted their self-portraits on oil. Lajos Varga Nándor depicted himself in an old-fashioned costume, a red cap, and the parallels of his figure taking form as if appearing from the dark of the studio as well as the nude visible in the background can be found in several of his copperplate self-portraits as well as in Szőnyi's pictures. Similarly to Szőnyi' double portraits, we know of a double portrait made by Varga also, commemorating his friendship with another artist. He and Imre Nagy painted this work jointly in the Kecskemét colony of artists in 1921. Szőnyi was invited to the colony in the next year.
While in the works of most representatives of the etcher generation the plasticity of the physiognomic features is emphatic, the self-portraits of Jenő Tarjáni Simkovics have always preserved the consistency of the specific features of the face. Still his drawings remain the most varied ones among his contemporaries' works: apart from varying the settings and viewing angles his suggestive self-portraits of stern looks convey the widest variety of moods and feelings. The short-trimmed hair and almost bald head, the narrow face, the long nose and the split eyes are constant elements of the representations, but the plastic relief of the face keeps changing with the always different lighting conditions. A self-portrait resembling that of Tarjáni Simkovics was made by Ivan Radovic, who was the same age as Szőnyi, and who studied painting with him in Réti's class at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1918, and visited Nagybánya (Baia Mare, Romania) in the summer of the same year, then the Kecskemét colony of artists in 1920.
Apart from Szőnyi and his followers, the self-portraits are significant pieces in the oeuvre of Gyula Derkovits, too, born also in 1894. The artist whose works were exhibited in the Belvedere and who often exhibited together with the members of the etcher generation, painted a profaned bishop-self-portrait that offers a most radical example of the role-playing self-portraits of the young artists in the twenties. In the etched version of this picture Derkovits went even one step further, as the five-pointed star of the mitre is a direct allusion to his political-ideological views: the artist with his hands put together in a gesture of prayer appears to the viewer as the priest of a new belief. Although based on its style this low-keyed, costumed self-portrait can be placed beside the paintings of the Szőnyi group, Derkovits' figure - in contrast to them - is not reservedly pious or consciously posing, instead the stubborn determination radiating from the face looks familiar in comparison with the self-portraits of Uitz. Further examples can be found for dressing up in clerical or even pontifical habits in the Hungarian art of the 1910s, but Dezső Czigány's gimlet-eyed Cardinal's Self-Portrait carries rather ironic half-tones.
Similarly to the painting of Derkovits who drew and experimented with etching in Kmetty's atelier, a more broken-up, cubistic form-creation characterises one of the early pieces of Kecskemét Artist Circle member Jenő Gábor's abundant self-portraits. His Facing Self-Portrait of a captivating look can be linked to the painting art of the 1910s and brings to mind Kmetty's Self-Portrait made a decade earlier. In both pictures the suggestive gaze looks straight into the viewer's eyes, but opposite to Kmetty's light-sliced face that radiates a missionary zeal, Jenő Gábor appearing in front of a reddish background has snake-like, narrow pupils that convey a threatening, demonic force.
Self-portraits are not uncommon in Jenő Paizs Goebel's oeuvre, either, as he painted himself on several occasions, either alone or with a friend or friends. The three artist figures in his painting created in Paris - notably Gyula Czimra sunk deeply in his thoughts, the costumed Paizs Goebel turning to face the viewer in a 'self-revealing' pose and the actively working artists-craftsman, Albert Varga - represent the Szőnyi group's characteristic self-portrait types. In his self-portrait made in 1927 Paizs Goebel depicted himself as Saint Sebastian, or rather one should say, he picked himself as the sitter for his Saint Sebastian composition. Of the once prevalent figures of classic Christian iconography the suffering and helpless figure of Saint Sebastian would play a significant role in the art of the 1910s and 20s. The Czech Bohumil Kubista also depicted the saint killed with arrows in the form of a self-portrait, while Saint Sebastian's form appears in several drawings of the German Willy Jaeckel, too. The master of Croatian neoclassicism, with French schooling, Sava Sumanovic composed the story into a many-figured scene. In Hungarian art not only the monumental stone sculpture of Fülöp Beck Ö. made in the 1910s but also Perlrott-Csaba's cubistic, broken-up lithograph and György Szántó's expressionist copperplate holds up for us the confessor martyr who had been sentenced to death, and whose metaphorical, stylised character lent the title to one of Szántó's novels (Sebastianus' Passage Accomplished). As regards the members of the etcher generation, we know of drawings made by Szőnyi and Gyula Komjáti Wanyerka depicting the same theme. And in the Pécs Artist Circle Jenő Gábor and Farkas Molnár also painted the Saint Sebastian theme. Molnár's masculine body of classical beauty standing in front of a cosmic landscape is in contrast with Paizs Goebel's thin, skinny semi-nude character who is growing high above the houses of Szentendre sleeping in idyllic peace. His figure is not one of a soldier saint of strained muscles fighting against his fate, instead there is a dry smile upon his face: this role-playing is ironic and self-ironic rather than tragic.