Full Name Por Bertalan Nationality Hungary Name Bertalan Por | Died 1964
Budapest Known for Painting | |
Born 1880 Budapest, Hungary Movement The Eight (Nyolcak), fauvism, cubism | ||
Bertalan Por 拜爾陶隆·普爾 (1880-1964) Post-Impressionism Hungarian
Bertalan Por (1880–1964) was a Hungarian painter associated with the development of modernist Hungarian art. He was a member of The Eight, a movement among several Hungarian painters in the early twentieth century who represented the radical edge in Budapest. They introduced Fauvism, cubism, and expressionism to Hungarian art.
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Early life and education
Born in Budapest in 1880 to a Hungarian Jewish family, Por started drawing as a child. He was a student of Laszlo Gyulay in the School of Industrial Design in Budapest. Because the city had no art academy, many aspiring artists went to Munich, Bavaria to study, beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century. Por was among them, studying with the German artist Gabriel von Hackl.
Later Simon Hollosy, who had taught some free classes in Munich, and other Hungarian artists who had studied there, founded their own center in 1896 at Nagybanya (present-day Baia Mare, Romania). Founding artists included Istvan Reti, Janos Thorma, and Karoly Ferenczy, often called the "Nagybanya artists' colony". Their collective energy strongly influenced the development of twentieth-century Hungarian art. Por studied at Nagybanya with Hollosy for a short time.
Career
In the early 20th century, Por went to Paris, where he studied with Jean Paul Laurens at the Academie Julian. He returned to Hungary and began his career, becoming a popular portrait painter. He also worked as a fresco painter.
In 1909 Por joined with The Eight, which had an exhibit New Pictures in Budapest that year. They first showed as The Eight in 1911, representing the advanced edge of Hungarian art culture. Others in the group were Karoly Kernstok, Robert Bereny, Dezso Czigany, Bela Czobel, Odon Marffy, Dezso Orban, and Lajos Tihanyi. Although the painters mounted only three shows together, they participated in events with new music and literature, and were influential through the First World War. They shaped modernist art in the country.
Por and Kernstok especially adopted some of the ideas of the Fauvists and Cubists, as they were influenced by both German and French theories of the time. Por "admired Ferdinand Hodler."
Paris was closed during the Great War to artists from "non-allied" nations. After the fall of the Hungarian Democratic Republic in 1919, Por was one of the many artists who emigrated; he went to Czechoslovakia. He primarily painted landscapes and pictures of animals. During this period abroad, Por also traveled to France, Italy, and the Soviet Union on artistic patronage.
He settled in Paris in 1938, where there were numerous other Hungarian emigres in the artistic circles, including a younger generation. Tihanyi died in Paris that year, but he had introduced Por to his young nephew, Ervin Marton, who had come to Paris in 1937 and whose work in photography Tihanyi encouraged.
During 1944-1946 after the Liberation of Paris, Por worked with Marton and the writer Gyorgy Boloni on reorganizing the Hungarian House, a center for the emigre artistic community. Artists ran it cooperatively as a place to feature their works in contemporary art. Por continued to be involved with the Hungarians in Paris.
In 1948, after the rise of the communist government in Hungary, Por was offered a position in the Budapest Academy (what is now the Hungarian University of Fine Arts). He returned to the capital to teach. Except for travel, he remained there, teaching and painting, for the rest of his life.
The Hungarian National Gallery holds one of Por's oil self-portraits from the 1910s. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City has his 1919 lithograph, Vilag Proletarjai Egyesuljetek! (Proletarians of the World, Unite!).
Exhibits
Legacy and honors
With the centenary of the first show of The Eight in 1911, exhibits have been mounted about them as a group and individually: