Mihály Zichy

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Michael von Zichy
Zichy: Lucifer
From the love cycle
Funerary monument in the Kerepescher Cemetery in Budapest. Bust of Alajos Stróbl

Michael von Zichy (actually Mihály Zichy [ ˈmihaːj ˈzitʃi ]; born October 15, 1827 in Zala , Somogy County , Austrian Empire ; †  February 28, 1906 in Saint Petersburg ) was a Hungarian painter .

Life

Zichy was born the son of country nobility. In 1842 he took up law studies in Pest . At the same time he studied painting with the Italian Jacopo Marastoni . In 1844 he moved to Vienna to study with Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller .

Although his works did not go unnoticed, he lacked the financial livelihood. In 1847 he turned to St. Petersburg, where Grand Duchess Helena Pavlovna hired him to teach her daughter Katharina Mikhailovna (1827-1894) drawing. In 1849 he went into business for himself and created his greatest works. Tsar Alexander II appointed Zichy court painter in 1859. During this time numerous paintings by important Russian courtiers were created . There he married Countess Elisabeth Vratislav von Mitrovitz in 1865. The marriage ended as early as 1867.

In 1874 he left Russia for Paris , where he lived for five years and became President of the Hungarian Union. There he met Félicien Rops and Gustave Doré and painted a. a. the image courtesan based on the main character of Émile Zola's novel Nana . He returned several times to Russia to carry out artistic commissions. He spent the last decades of his life at the court of Tsar Alexander III. .

Today there is a museum dedicated to the artist in Zala. In Budapest the street "Zichy Mihály utca" was named after him.

power

His work is best known today for his impartial treatment of the subject of "physical love". Zichy's focus was on the representation of the fantastic, the supernatural and the gruesome. In drawings, watercolors and oil paintings, he preferred to deal with subjects whose mystical, speculative and transcendental tendencies cannot be represented by painting. His coloristic treatment serves his eccentric inventions. Zichy is one of the most important artists of Hungarian Romanticism. He also worked as a graphic artist and created, in addition to erotic depictions, illustrations for works by Hungarian writers, such as the dramatic poem Die Tragödie des Menschen by Imre Madách (1887) or the ballads by János Arany (1894–98).

Appreciation

The writer Kurt Tucholsky was a great admirer of Zichy's erotic works. In 1926 he had lost his Zichy edition, which he had acquired many years earlier, during a move, and therefore published it under his pseudonym Peter Panter under the heading Where are you -? the following search ad for the beloved band in the world stage :

“ [...] Among the books was one that made a powerful impression on me. It was called: 'Liebe' and consisted of forty lithographs by a Russian painter, Count Zichy. They weren't unreasonable. Some scenes remained in my memory: busy hustle and bustle at night in the boys' boarding school, many light and dainty bed pictures of the enticing warmth of the women's bodies [...] The last page consisted only of sketches of hands busy with all sorts of things, one handed out a nasal blow . It was pretty cheerful. [...]
The book stayed with me for fourteen years. [...] And when they were packing my belongings because Poincaré called me, I put it on top, carelessly unwrapped. [...] and when the whole swing arrived in Paris, there was [...] missing this and that, and also the Zichy. What now -? [...] It was also possible that a customs officer ... I don't dare to think it through. In short: the Zichy was gone. [...]
And then I wanted to ask if anyone saw it. [...] It would be conceivable that someone bought it for study purposes, for the sake of science, just to look at something like that and what people say. [...] And if someone has it, please tell me. I'll buy him a new one, but I'd like to have that one back. It soaked up so much; As is well known, life sticks to objects, just like walls, you live them fully ... It is a kind of memory, a reminder of the good times when we were young and considerably more curious than today. A reminder of the time when one eye did not always look when the other was shining - a decade lives in it. [...]
Where are you? In good care? Are they nice to you Where are you -?"

- Peter Panter (Kurt Tucholsky) : Where are you -? , in: Die Weltbühne, December 21, 1926, No. 51, p. 968, reprint in: Tucholsky, With 5 PS (1928)

Works

  • Lifeboat (Budapest, Hungarian National Gallery), 1847, oil on canvas, 135 × 190 cm
  • The Old Bachelor (Vienna, Austrian Gallery), around 1850, oil on canvas
  • Prisoner in the Dungeon (Budapest, Hungarian National Gallery), 1850s, oil on canvas, 138 × 100 cm
  • The Triumph of the Genius of Destruction (Budapest, Hungarian National Gallery), 1878, oil on canvas, 447 × 550 cm
  • Falling Stars (Zala, Zichy Museum), 1879, oil on canvas, 400 × 200 cm
  • Love . Forty photogravures based on drawings by Michael von Zichy. Leipzig, 1911 (private print)

literature

Web links

Commons : Mihály Zichy  - album with pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Zichy, Mihály
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zichy, Mihály von; Zichi, Mikhail Alexandrovich; Zichy, Michael von; Siczy, Mihály from
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian painter
DATE OF BIRTH October 15, 1827
PLACE OF BIRTH Zala , Somogy County , Hungary
DATE OF DEATH February 28, 1906
Place of death St. Petersburg