The son of a family of Orosházi middle landowners, he took a job as an accountant after graduation, while in 1916 he enrolled in the National Royal Hungarian School of Applied Arts (later the College of Applied Arts, then MOME), and in 1918 he received a scholarship to Germany: he studied pentameter at the Pforzheim School of Applied Arts in Bavaria. From 1920, Carl von Marr was his master for five years at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.
After returning home in 1925, he settled in Orosháza. By this time he was married and had a son Mihály. From 1930 to 1936 he studied at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts under Bertalan Karlovszky and Oszkár Glatz. His art history teacher was Károly Lyka. His paintings were already appearing in exhibitions at the Kunsthalle. He made study trips to Paris, Rome, Moscow and Leningrad. He built a studio first in Csobanka and then in Szigliget, where he lived from 1938 to 1966, later with his second wife, Lia, and their daughter Hilda.
In 1961 he received an honorary diploma from the Austrian Association of Fine Arts.
In 1966, he moved with his family to Balatonfüred, where he continued to work in retirement until 1986. He applied for important exhibitions in vain, as his outspokenness led to his exclusion from the ranks of the art elite, which was supported by the communist regime, and his applications for exhibitions were regularly rejected. His grave is in the public cemetery in Balatonfüred.
His paintings of peasant subjects and of the Balaton region make up the bulk of his artistic work. He is also an excellent portrait painter. In the later years of his life he also painted still lifes. His portraits, life pictures and landscapes mainly continue the spirit and presentation of Glatz’s pictorialism.
He worked mainly for the foreign market. Most of his paintings went to Hungarian, Austrian and German collectors in the USA, and a Japanese state delegation visiting Hungary bought 10 of his paintings at a time.
Pictures from the artist’s life
