They were connected to Post-Impressionism and radical movements in literature and music as well, and led to the rise of modernism in art culture.
The members of The Eight, Róbert Berény, Dezső Czigány, Béla Czóbel, Károly Kernstok, Ödön Márffy, Dezső Orbán, Bertalan Pór and Lajos Tihanyi, were primarily inspired by French painters and art movements including Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Fauvism.
The exhibitions were accompanied by series of symposia, and by events featuring new Hungarian literature and contemporary music.
A year before his death, he said: "It fills me with happiness to know that my youth coincided with that memorable period in intellectual development, when not only in Europe but also in Hungary, those seeking new, better things in literature, music, painting, science, politics and social life were carried by vibrant, seething currents.
It can’t have been by chance that Endre Ady broke in with his new songs at the time when Béla Bartók came with his new chords, when progressive intellectuals gathered round reviews like "Nyugat" (Occident) and "XX.