Akos Biro

来自 : www.akosbiro.com/ 发布时间：2021-03-24

was bom on the 9th April 1911 in Nagykdroly, Hungary (in 1919 it became Carei, Rumania). His parents came from the gentry and traded in textiles.From his childhood, he was sensually drawn to painting. In his old age he could still remember the smell of the paint-box, that his uncle had offered him at the age of five and the pleasant cedar wood fragrance, which emanated from his drawing crayons. Later, the smell of paints that pervaded his masters studios would always move him.At about ten, he started to copy reproductions of minor masters, with his colouring pencils. His home town might not liave provided much artistic interest but the surrounding villages were rich in folklore. Hungarian, Rumanian, Swabian and Gypsy villages, each had their own character, festivals and colours, where he could take his fill of the diversity of popular art. The images offcast days, music, dancing, grape harvests; outings in a horse-drawn coach, to great country houses surrounded by parks; ponds swarming with aquatic wildlife, buffalos, cows, bareback horse-riding, were all captured in the future painters memory.His 13 was a testing time for him; his parents left Transylvania, which had become Rumanian, to settle in Debrecen, a large protestant town in the Hungarian Plain. He left behind him the warm colourful life in Transylvania and found himself in the haughty and cold community of a large modern protestant high school. He frequented drawing studio where he sketched plaster models. He received his decisive impulse towards painting in Bekescsaba where he spend his last year of high school at his aunt\'s and where he met his drawing teacher who would later become his friend. He felt great respect and admiration both for the man and for the master, whose love of the profession and whose devotion helped form, not orily the artistic sense but also the moral reflection of his pupils. He then attended Academy of Art of Budapest, where he was a pupil under Gyula Rudnay, a traditional but deep artist whose paintings reflected the tragic social climate in this time in Hungary. A most appreciated Master whose style would influence him for years. He was awarded a scholarship in his third year and became a live in student, in the Falconieri Palace and he worked at Rome Art School. After seven wonderful weeks in Capri, he returned to Hungary where he exibited his work in Csikszereda and Bekescsaba, before deciding to go to Paris in April 1935. These turned out to be years of great poverty but rich in experiences. He managed to survive by doing sketches on the terraces of La Coupole, Le Dome and La Rotonde, famous cafe restaurants. After marrying Ida Scheda at the beginning of 1937, he worked in cafes and at provincial town fairs and succeeded in earning enough to be able to start painting again and organise an exhibition of his work in Rennes and Dinard. Between 1939 and 1940 he worked in Biarritz and then retoumed to Paris then in Hungary. He set himself up in a smart studio in Budapest and formed links with the artistic and intellectual Hungarian society and exhibited several times in the National Museum. In 1944 Hungary was invaded by the German troops. He deserted the army, and for several months he and his wife hide a Czech-Jewish woman. In March 1945, the Red Army entered Hungary. The siege of Budapest was to last seven weeks. The house he was living in was bombed but his family was unscathed.