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Lajos Tihanyi (29 October 1885 – 11 June 1938) was a Hungarian painter and lithographer who achieved international renown working outside his country, primarily in Paris, France. After emigrating in 1919, he never returned to Hungary, even on a visit.
Born in Budapest, as a young man, Tihanyi was part of the "Neoimpressionists" or "Neos", and later the influential avant-garde group of painters called The Eight ( A Nyolcak), founded in 1909 in Hungary. They were experimenting with styles of Post-Impressionism and rejected the naturalism of the Nagybánya artists' colony. Their work is considered highly influential in establishing modernism in Hungary to 1918, when the First World War and revolution overtook the country.
After the fall of the Hungarian Republic in 1919, Tihanyi left and lived briefly in Vienna. He moved on to Berlin for a few years, where he connected with many Hungarian émigré writers and artists, such as Gyorgy Bölöni and the future Brassaï. By 1924 Tihanyi and numerous other artists moved to Paris, where he stayed for the remainder of his life.
In Paris, Tihanyi gradually shifted to more abstract styles in his work. His paintings and lithographs are held by the Hungarian National Gallery, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York City, among other institutions, and by private collectors. With the centenary of The Eight's first exhibition, Tihanyi has been featured in five exhibitions since 2004, including ones held in 2010 and 2012 in Hungary and Austria, and another in 2012 devoted to a solo retrospective of his work.
He helped introduce the Post-Impressionist concepts and techniques of Cubism and Expressionism to art circles in Hungary. As one of a group called the "Neos," he adopted techniques other than the naturalism espoused by Simon Hollósy and others of the artists' colony. The older men had studied together in Munich in the late nineteenth century. "Munich in Hungarian, Hungarian Artists in Munich 1850–1914, 2 Oct 2009 – Jan 2010" , Hungarian National Gallery, accessed 6 Sep 2010
Tihanyi and others of the "Neos" developed into the Hungarian avant-garde. Károly Kernstok was considered a leader, and others were Béla Czóbel, Vilmos Perlrott-Csaba and Béla Iványi Grünwald, and Sándor Ziffer. Some had already been to Paris, where they were influenced by the work of French painters such as Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse.
At the age of 24, Tihanyi was one of The Eight ( A Nyolcak) (1909–1918) at the leading edge of Hungarian art life. The Eight included the painters Kernstok and Czóbel, plus Róbert Berény, Dezső Czigány, Ödön Márffy, Desiderius Orban, and Bertalan Pór. The sculptors Márk Vedres and Vilmos Fémes Beck were also associated with them. "Painting and Sculpture in the First Half of 20th Century" , Hungarian National Gallery, accessed 15 Sep 2010 While they had three exhibits as a group, they were also influential for participating in related events in literature and music, and were important through 1918.S. A. Mansbach: Modern Art in Eastern Europe. From the Baltic to the Balkans, ca. 1890–1939. Pratt Institute, New York. 1999.
The Eight were part of the radical intellectual movements in the early 20th century Budapest, which attracted new artists in literature and music as well. Among the new writers and composers were Endre Ady and Béla Bartók. The Eight's style was quite complex. They worked with the rationalism of cubists, the decorative use of color as seen in the Fauvism, and the emotional depth of German Expressionism. Their many-sided artistic activities are represented by Kernstok's "monumental painting," Riders at the Waterside (1910) and Bertalan Pór's The Family (1909).
(Tihanyi, together with Ziffer, Czóbel and Berény, was considered one of the Hungarian Fauves. This aspect of their work was featured together with pieces by French artists in a 2006 exhibition at the Hungarian National Gallery.) The 'Hungarian Fauves' from Paris to Nagybánya 1904–1914 , Culturekiosque, 2006
The writer and journalist Lajos Kassák founded A Tett (Action) in 1915, and later Ma (Today); these published articles on literature and art, and provided reproductions of some work. They featured Tihanyi, who had a solo exhibit in their offices in 1915. Before the war, he was recognized for his independent creativity. Valerie Majoros, "Lajos Tihanyi and his friends in the Paris of the nineteen-thirties" , French Cultural Studies, 2000, Vol. 11:387, Sage Publications, accessed 30 January 2013
By the end of World War I, the leading art style in Hungary shifted to the radical movement of Activism, in which Tihanyi also participated. The Activists pushed the cubist and expressionist innovations into a radical direction. In addition to Tihanyi, masters were József Nemes Lampérth and Béla Uitz. Béni Ferenczy's sculpture, Standing Boy, also showed the influence of Cubism.
Tihanyi worked and lived for the rest of his life abroad, first briefly in Vienna, then a few years in Berlin, which was flooded with radical artists and intellectuals from Eastern and Central Europe. Krisztina Passuth, "Hungarian Art Outside Hungary: Berlin in the 1920s" , Hungarian Studies, 1994, Vol.19, No. 1-2, 1994, accessed 2 February 2013 Kassak's journal Ma started publishing in Vienna, and László Moholy-Nagy became its Berlin editor in April 1921. In addition to the Hungarians, by that time Russians, including the Ukrainian artist Archipenko, were arriving in Berlin; he quickly achieved more notice for his constructions than he had in Paris, and the first monograph was published on him in 1921.Passuth (1994), "Hungarian Art Outside Hungary", pp. 128–129 There was a "short-lived synthesis" of the international avant-garde in Berlin, as the Eastern, Central, and Western European intellectual currents came together.Passuth (1994), "Hungarian Art Outside Hungary", p. 132
After that time, Tihanyi moved on to Paris, where he lived most of his life. Because of his reluctance to sell his paintings, in his early years abroad, he sometimes relied on some financial help from his father, who owned a coffee shop in Budapest. In Berlin, Tihanyi met the Hungarian writer Gyórgy Bölöni, the 12-years-younger artist Gyula Halász (later known as the photographer Brassaï), and other artists and writers. Brassai, Letters to My Parents , University of Chicago Press, 1995, p. 241, accessed 6 Sep 2010
Working in the Constructivist and Expressionist modes of his activism, Tihanyi painted and drew many of his friends, mostly fellow foreigners: among his subjects were the American composer George Antheil, the German writer Johannes Becher, Leonard Frank, the writer Ivan Goll, Louis Gruenberg, a Russian-American composer; Henri Guilbeaux, a French socialist; Vincent Huidoboro, the architect Adolph Loos, and the writer Karl Kraus. In turn, Tihanyi often appeared in photos by Kertész and Brassaï of groups at their favorite cafés. In Paris, by 1933 he joined the "Abstraction-Creation" group, with whom he sometimes showed his work, and also had solo shows. Tihanyi became internationally known for his painting and lithography, with much of his best work held by museums outside Hungary.
When Tihanyi's nephew Ervin Marton came to Paris in 1937, the painter introduced the younger man to many of his friends, bringing him within his circle. Marton became most prominent as a photographer after World War II, although he also worked in graphic arts and sculpture. He lived the remainder of his life in Paris.
Tihanyi died an early death in 1938, not yet 53. He was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery, where the author Robert Desnos gave the valedictory, standing next to the politician Michael Karolyi, "a leading figure of the 1918 Revolution".
Brassaï and Bölöni arranged for storage of art works by Hungarians in Paris during World War II, including many by Tihanyi. Their support of Hungarian art continued after the war. Together with Kertész, Brassaï and de la Frégonnière in 1970 helped transfer much of Tihanyi's work to the Hungarian National Gallery, founded in 1957. Kincses, Károly. "Brassaï: The Hungarian Documents. A Chronology in Letters 1940–1984" , The Hungarian Quarterly (188/2007), pp. 58–84, accessed 9 September 2010
With fellow painter Bertalan Pór, Tihanyi figures prominently as a fictionalized character in Cafe Europa: An Edna Ferber Mystery, by Ed Ifkovic, which deals with 1914 Budapest.
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