Biography
Ödön Márffy was a modern Hungarian painter and graphic artist. Member of MIÉNK, Yolcak and KUT. His painting style is mostly related to the vision of the Fauves and then the Parisian school.
Son of clerk Károly Jakab Márffy and Janka Scheiber. After a short preparatory education in Hungary, in 1902 he traveled to Paris to study with a scholarship from the Székesfővárosi Council. He first became a student of Jean-Paul Laurens at the Julian Academy, but later that year he transferred to the state school, the École des Beaux-Arts, in the class of Fernand Cormon, where he spent four years. His early works were made in the spirit of post-impressionism, and then his interest turned to Fauvism. In addition to learning the compulsory studies, it was at least as useful for him to come into contact with painting students who were already enthusiastic about modern trends. On their pages, he got to know the paintings of Cézanne, van Gogh and Pierre Bonnard, as well as the most modern painters of the time, Henri Matisse and the Fauves. In 1906, it appeared for the first time at the Salon d'Automne exhibition.
He returned home in the fall of 1906 and soon presented his brightly colored works based on plein air aspirations at collective exhibitions. It was also in this year that he won recognition in the most significant artistic year of the age, with four thousand crowns, the Ferenc József Coronation Jubilee Award. The considerable amount of money allowed him to make further study trips to Italy and Dalmatia. His successes were noticed by József Rippl-Rónai and Károly Kernstok. With the support of Rippl-Rónai, Márffy became a founding member of the MIÉNK artist group, while Kernstok invited him to paint on his estate in Nyergesújfalu. Márffy worked with Kernstok the following year, and they developed their Fauve painting in interaction with each other.
The Hungarian Vadak group, mainly from Budapest - who at that time were mostly referred to as "seekers" -, organized around Károly Kernstok, separated from MIÉNK at the end of 1909 and formed the first Hungarian avant-garde group, the Eight. At their first exhibition, the "New Pictures It was titled "", and caused great outrage among conservative critics. In the following years, Márffy's painting - like the other members of the Eight - went through a continuous transformation, the loose, Fauves brushwork was replaced by a strict compositional order reflecting the influence of Cézanne. In World War I, he worked as a war painter in the rank of first lieutenant.
In Paris, as early as 1906, he made friends with Endre Ady, of whom he later painted a watercolor portrait. In 1920, he married Ady's widow, Csinszka, i.e. Berta Boncza (1894-1934), and then his prolific creative period follows. In 1924, he was a founding member of the New Society of Visual Artists (KUT), and from 1927 he became its president for ten years. In 1928, he traveled to America and achieved success with his exhibitions in Washington and New York. In 1928, 1930 and 1958, he organized exhibitions of his domestic collection at the Ernst Museum, and in 1931 he also organized one at the Tamás Gallery.
The II. After World War II, he became involved in the work of the European School, remarried in 1948: he married Franciska Hacker, who was almost forty years younger than him. In the 1950s, Márffy could not adapt to the socialist realist expectations, and he became part of the class in quiet neglect.