József Egry
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József Egry (1883–1951) was a Hungarian painter, considered a significant representative of Hungarian modernism.


Life

He was a self-taught painter. Spent a year in
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with the help of Károly Lyka. From there he entered the College of Fine Arts with
Pál Szinyei Merse Pál Szinyei Merse (4 July 1845, Chminianska Nová Ves, Szinyeújfalu – 2 February 1920, Jarovnice, Jernye) was a Hungarian painter and art educator. Biography He was born into a family of the old nobility who supported the Hungarian Revolu ...
and
Károly Ferenczy Károly Ferenczy (February 8, 1862 – March 18, 1917) was a Hungarian painter and leading member of the Nagybánya artists' colony.Ilona Sármány-Parsons"Károly Ferenczy" Oxford Art Online He was among several artists who went to Munich for ...
. He was an exhibiting artist from 1910. In 1911, he reached Belgium, where he was greatly influenced by the figures of the painter and sculptor Meunier, who portrayed port workers. For a few years, he himself painted workers living on the outskirts of the city in a summary style in a golden-brown color scheme. He also studied in
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and
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in 1904 and at the
Académie Julian The () was a private art school for painting and sculpture founded in Paris, France, in 1867 by French painter and teacher Rodolphe Julian (1839–1907). The school was active from 1868 through 1968. It remained famous for the number and qual ...
in Paris in 1905. He continued his studies in
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. Egry's works were
Expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...
and Constructivist in nature. He was called as painter of
Lake Balaton Lake Balaton () is a freshwater rift lake in the Transdanubian region of Hungary. It is the List of largest lakes of Europe, largest lake in Central Europe, and one of the region's foremost tourist destinations. The Zala River provides the larges ...
.Biography of EGRY, József, Fine Arts in Hungary
/ref> During World War I, he suffered a serious accident during training, after which he was sent to the
Badacsony Badacsony () is the name of a region on the north shore of Lake Balaton in western Hungary, a mountain top and a town in that region. The nearby basalt mountains are unique geological relics, and the habitat of many rare plants and animals. The ...
military hospital. There he met his future wife Juliska Pauler, who worked as a volunteer nurse at the hospital. In the 1920s, he began to deal with the transforming power of light. At first, he approached the cult of the sun with expressionist symbolism, painting troubled, restless pictures with individual strength. He developed a mixed oil-pastel technique in order to work with incorporeal surfaces suitable for halo phenomena. The atmosphere permeated by light remained his theme throughout. He found orderliness between 1924-1929. "I wear holiday clothes for my soul when I paint." "He who enters nature loses his reality." The image of a rainbow was inspired by the rainbow semicircle seen on Grünewald's altar in
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, a symbol of life after death. He included this in his own observations of light phenomena. His self-portraits and the Herald, which is a hidden self-portrait, are documents of his loneliness. Partly due to his deteriorating health as a result of his war injuries, he went on trips to
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, mainly to
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. His works Taormina (1930) and then Nervi (1938) came from these trips. The bright lights he saw there solidified his ideas. His works varied a theme, mainly the Balaton landscape. It disassembles and edits at the same time. This is a new interpretation of naturalism, which is a completely original sound in European painting. His last completed work is the 1944 Golden Gate. In 1948, he was one of the first to receive the Kossuth Prize. He died in Badacsony in 1951 and is buried in the Badacsony-Tomaji cemetery. His widow died in 1957.


References


Sources

* * * * 1883 births 1951 deaths 20th-century Hungarian painters Académie Julian alumni Hungarian male painters 20th-century Hungarian male artists People from Zala County {{hungary-painter-stub