Lajos Tihanyi Biography

Lajos Tihanyi (1885–1938) was a Hungarian avant-garde painter whose portraits and still lifes combined Expressionism, Cubism and the bold colour of Fauvism. Born in Budapest, he became deaf following childhood meningitis. Although he received some instruction, much of his artistic education came through independent study, travel and contact with other painters. He visited Paris in 1907 and spent several summers painting at Nagybánya, an important centre of modern Hungarian art.

In 1909 Tihanyi became a founding member of the group known as The Eight (Nyolcak), whose artists challenged academic painting and the older Impressionist tradition. Among his fellow members was Róbert Berény. His paintings broke forms into angular planes and used colour to express character rather than simply describe appearance. He was particularly interested in portraits of writers, intellectuals and other members of Budapest's artistic circles.

His The Critic (1916), held by the Brooklyn Museum, depicts his friend Andor Halasi, a literary critic. 

After the political upheavals of 1919, Tihanyi left Hungary, living in Vienna and Berlin before settling in Paris in 1923. There he encountered international artists and increasingly turned towards abstraction. In 1933 he joined the Abstraction-Création group, which promoted non-figurative art. He died in Paris in 1938. His career connects the first generation of Hungarian modernism with the wider European avant-garde.