Béla Kádár (painter)

Memorial plaque for Béla Kádár, Budapest, VIII. District, 17 Bródy Sándor Street, by Iván Szabó .

Béla Kádár (born June 14, 1877 in Budapest , Austria-Hungary ; died January 22, 1956 in Budapest) was a Hungarian painter and draftsman . He is one of the most important Hungarian visual artists of the 20th century.

Life

Kádár came from a Jewish working class family in Hungary. Because of the early death of his father, he had to work as an iron turner after only six years of elementary school . He started painting at an early age and studied from 1902 at the Budapest Academy of Fine Arts. In 1906 he had a highly regarded exhibition in the Hungarian National Gallery . After leaving Hungary for the first time in 1910 on study trips to Paris and Berlin , he finally left his homeland in 1918 to live in Germany and France. In 1919 he had an exhibition with Hugo Scheiber in Vienna . In October 1923 Kádár had his first major solo exhibition in Herwarth Walden's (1878–1941) gallery in Berlin and his pictures were published in his art magazine “ Der Sturm ”. During his stay in Berlin in the 1920s, he changed his drawing style from a distinctive expression to a more romantic one. He was inspired by the German Expressionists and especially by the artists of the " Blue Rider " and included elements of other contemporary styles in his works, such as cubism , futurism , neo-primitivism , constructivism and metaphysical painting .

During the 1920s and early 1930s, he exhibited twice in Budapest, Berlin, Philadelphia and, through the mediation of Katherine Dreier, at New York's Brooklyn Museum . In September 1928 he traveled to New York for the second exhibition.

Kádár was imprisoned in the Budapest ghetto in 1944; his wife and sons became victims of the Holocaust .

Appreciation

Kádár stands for an independent and unmistakable artistic work, in which the rural life of the homeland with its diverse folkloric details is united with Hasidic piety. Poetic in the scenic, in the colors and lines. A constant change between the thing-like and the compositionally conditioned, between the body contour and lyrical lettering.

It is characteristic of Kádár's works that they awaken the illusion of the real and the super-real and were created with a high level of technical perfection and a sense of harmony that exudes serenity. Behind his sense of harmony is a deep compassion for human destinies and inexhaustible hope. Even in the most difficult times, for example when his work was labeled as degenerate art , he did not let hope go.

literature

• Melanie Fisher: Béla Kádár. Modernist and Romantic. Dorrance Pub. Co, USA 1999, ISBN 0-8059-4497-4
• Gergely Mariann: Bela Kadar - Melancholic Journey. Mű-Terem, Budapest 2002
• Bela Kadar. Altstadt Galerie Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden 1986
• Kádár, Béla . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 3 : K-P . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1956, p. 1 .
• Á. Nováky: Kádár, Béla . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 79, de Gruyter, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-023184-7 , p. 67.

Web links

• Image document from a catalog
• Color rendering of some paintings
• Béla Kádár at artportal.hu (Hungarian)
• Béla Kádár on kunstaspekte.de