Hungarian artist Béla Kádár began his career painting murals in Budapest having attended the city’s Academy of Fine Arts. In the first decade of the twentieth century Budapest was a...
Hungarian artist Béla Kádár began his career painting murals in Budapest having attended the city’s Academy of Fine Arts. In the first decade of the twentieth century Budapest was a hubbub of art and culture, but with the outbreak of the First World War, and its tragic outcomes, the promising development of Modern art in Hungary was interrupted. Though not initially politically persecuted, Kádár found himself in a void in Budapest. Having already made two pilgrimages to Paris and one to Berlin by 1910, in 1918 Kádár left his family behind for Western Europe.
In 1923 Kádár exhibited at Herwarth Walden’s famous Der Sturm gallery in Berlin. In the bustling metropolis of 1920s Berlin, Der Sturm gallery was the seismic epicentre of the avant-garde and the burgeoning visual arts scene. He took the influences of the German Expressionists exhibiting at Der Sturm, especially Heinrich Campendonk and Der Blaue Reiter’s Franz Marc.
Kádár often depicted rustic Hungarian village scenes within primary compositions. As Kádár evolved as an artist his unique style of painting changed to bring together the rural traditions of Hungarian folklore and his own private Jewish symbolism with stylistic elements derived from Cubo-futurism, Expressionism and Constructivism to create his own very individual language.
Under the patronage of American collector Katherine Drier, Kádár’s work was included twice -1926 and 1928 – in Société Anonyme exhibitions at Brooklyn Museum, New York. The Société Anonyme was instrumental in bringing the European avant-garde to New York. Kádár’s works can now be found in such museums as the Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest; Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid and Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia.
Dunkelman Gallery, Toronto (stock no. 248348) Geert van der Veen Fine Art, Toronto Connaught Brown, London (purchased from the above 12 October 1994) Private Collection, St. Louis (purchased from the above 28 October 1994)
Exhibitions
Dunkelman Gallery, Toronto 'Bela Kadar, Drawings and Gouaches', April 1971 London,
Connaught Brown, Béla Kádár: 1877-1956, 16 September – 23 October 2020