Teréz Zsolnay, married Mattyasovzky (21 March 1854 – 16 May 1944) was a Hungarian applied artist in the medium of

ceramics A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porce ...

who worked for the Zsolnay Ceramic Factory, founded by her father

Vilmos Zsolnay Vilmos Zsolnay (April 19, 1828 in Pécs March 23, 1900 in Pécs) was a Hungarian industrialist and entrepreneur. As the director of the Zsolnay porcelain manufacture he introduced new materials and inventions into the manufacture of pottery an ...

Pécs Pécs ( , ; ; Slovak language, Slovak: ''Päťkostolie''; also known by #Name, alternative names) is List of cities and towns of Hungary#Largest cities in Hungary, the fifth largest city in Hungary, on the slopes of the Mecsek mountains in the c ...

, in 1868. Along with her younger sister

Julia Julia may refer to: People *Julia (given name), including a list of people with the name *Julia (surname), including a list of people with the name *Julia gens, a patrician family of Ancient Rome *Julia (clairvoyant) (fl. 1689), lady's maid of Qu ...

and

Ármin Klein Ármin Klein (1855 – 1883) was a Hungarian painter, sculptor and applied artist in the medium of ceramics, who created almost his entire artistic oeuvre for the Zsolnay Ceramics Factory in Pécs. Along with the owner's daughter, sister Teréz ...

, she was the most important artist of that factory during its rapid growth and worldwide success in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Life and art

Teréz based her artistic expression on Hungarian folk motifs, and for this purpose she gathered a collection of folk art that numbered more than 10,000 objects. In her

memoirs A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative writing based on the author's personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autobio ...

, she also mentions that in addition to collecting folk treasures from around Pécs, she also had the opportunity to study the most typical motifs of other parts of Hungary, thanks to the friendliness of the then director of the

Hungarian National Museum The Hungarian National Museum (, ) was founded in 1802 and is the national museum for the history, art, and archaeology of Hungary, including areas not within Hungary's modern borders, such as Transylvania; it is separate to the collection of int ...

, who made many objects available to her. In addition, she closely followed trends in contemporary applied art, and in her memoirs she mentions the writings of Jacob von Falke, the director of the Museum of Applied Art in Vienna, who relied on the ideas of

Gottfried Semper Gottfried Semper (; 29 November 1803 – 15 May 1879) was a German architect, art critic, and professor of architecture who designed and built the Semper Opera House in Dresden between 1838 and 1841. In 1849 he took part in the May Uprising in ...

. Moreover, together with her sister Julija, she visited the painter and applied artist

Hans Makart Hans Makart (28 May 1840 – 3 October 1884) was an Austrian academic history painter, designer and decorator. Makart was a prolific painter whose ideas significantly influenced the development of visual art in Austria-Hungary, Germany, and other ...

in his Viennese studio. Among the sources she used was

Jost Amman Jost Amman (June 13, 1539 – March 17, 1591) was a Old Swiss Confederacy, Swiss-German artist, celebrated chiefly for his woodcuts, done mainly for book illustrations. Early life Amman was born in Zürich, the son of a professor of Cl ...

's book with 122 woodcuts of women's clothing, published in 1586. Her husband, Jakab Mattyasovzky, was a geologist who toured Hungary, and was of great help to his father-in-law Vilmos in finding the best

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolinite, ). Most pure clay minerals are white or light-coloured, but natural clays show a variety of colours from impuriti ...

deposits needed to make fine ceramics. She largely devoted her life to her family, and at the age of 70, she began writing the ''History of the Zsolnay Factory'', which she wrote in the form of memoires for over 20 years, on almost 2,500 pages of text. She was already over 70 years old when she got involved in the work of the factory again, painting Egyptian, figural and geometric motifs on vases (the so-called

Tutankhamun Tutankhamun or Tutankhamen, (; ), was an Egyptian pharaoh who ruled during the late Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt. Born Tutankhaten, he instituted the restoration of the traditional polytheistic form of an ...

series).Romváry 1989, 22

References

Literature and sources

*Romváry 1989 - Ferenc Romváry: Keramika Zsolnay, in: Keramika Zsolnay, exhibition catalogue, Zagreb, 1989., p. 16-22 *Kovács 1989 - Orsolya Kovács: Ármin Klein, umjetnik - projektant tvornice Zsolnay (1855 - 1883), in: Keramika Zsolnay, exhibition catalogue, Zagreb, 1989., p. 33-37 * W.hu/Zsolnay family 2023 {{DEFAULTSORT:Zsolnay, Terez 1854 births 1944 deaths Hungarian potters Women potters 20th-century Hungarian women artists Artists from Austria-Hungary 20th-century ceramists People from Pécs