János Kass (December 26, 1927 – March 29, 2010) was a Hungarian

illustrator An illustrator is an artist who specializes in enhancing writing or elucidating concepts by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text or idea. The illustration may be intended to clarify complicat ...

, printmaker,

graphic designer A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, ...

, postage stamp designer,

animated film Animation is a method by which image, still figures are manipulated to appear as Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent cel, celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited ...

director and teacher. Born in Szeged, he was the storyboard artist for the first fully digital animated film and died March 29 in Budapest.

Career

Beginning his artistic studies at the Applied Art Academy, Kass finished in 1951 at the Academy of Fine Arts, a student of Gyula Hincz, György Kádár and György Konecsni. From 1956 to 1959 he held the Derkovits scholarship. From 1961 to 1962, he was assistant professor at the Book-Art Academy in Leipzig, Germany. Kass regularly took part in every major national exhibition at home and abroad. He had one-man shows in Italy (1963),

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

(1970) and

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

(1976). He participated in the

Venice Biennial The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

(1960), the Youth Biennial in Paris (1961), and Biennials in Lugano, Tokyo, Ljubljana, São Paulo and Buenos Aires, along with "Intergrafik" exhibitions in Berlin. He made many friends within the British graphic art fraternity while spending some months in London during 1980, working on one of the earliest, fully digitised computer-animated films, Dilemma, with

John Halas John Halas (born János Halász;Brian McFarlane ''The Encyclopedia of British Film'', London: Methuen/BFI, 2003, p.48 16 April 1912 – 21 January 1995) was a pioneering British animator. Together with Gyula Macskássy (an acquaintance from Sá ...

. He had already won recognition with his illustrations and book designs. At the 1973 Leipzig Book Fair, his work was awarded the title of best illustrated book at the fair. This accolade was repeated at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1999. The 11-minute '' Dilemma'' was nominated at that year's Cannes Film Festival for the Golden Palm for Best Short Film, and is considered the first fully digital animated film. Kass was also a background artist for the So Beautiful and So Dangerous segment of Ivan Reitman Productions' 1981 animated feature film Heavy Metal.Pioneering Hungarian artist Janos Kass dead at 82
. ''forum.bcdb.com'', April 13, 2010. Kass' drawings, etchings and silk-screen prints were exhibited in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge in 1989 and in 1990 at

London Olympia Olympia London, sometimes referred to as the Olympia Exhibition Centre, is an convention center, exhibition centre, event space and conference centre in West Kensington, in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, London, England. A ran ...

. He later held a one-man show in Edinburgh.

Personal life

Eszter Kass, his daughter from a first marriage to the artist Gabriella Hajnal, also became an artist. His second wife, Vera Bánki, is a translator of English historical studies. They survive him.

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kass, Janos 1927 births 2010 deaths People from Szeged Hungarian painters Hungarian illustrators Hungarian animators Hungarian animated film directors Modern artists Hungarian printmakers 20th-century Hungarian male artists 21st-century Hungarian male artists 20th-century printmakers