Biography
Róbert Berény is a painter and graphic artist, one of the most important figures of the Hungarian avant-garde.
He started painting as a child, then studied first at the Model Drawing School in Budapest, and then at the Julian Academy in Paris. After returning home, he became a member of the most important group of artists of Hungarian modernism, the Eight. During the Hungarian Soviet Republic, in 1919, he assumed a public role and designed the iconic poster of the era ("To arms! To arms!"). After the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, he emigrated to Berlin and stopped painting for a while. In the mid-thirties, he started creating again: with a new style, he became a representative of the Post-Nagybánya group. He expressed his lyrical imagery with subtle, eclectic colors, and painted self-portraits with a meditative, gloomy mood. Outstanding graphic works were created for his late period.
Berény's artistic journey essentially turned the Eight movement back to the successor direction of the Nagybánya school. He worked mainly in Zebegény, while remaining an intellectual metropolitan artist. His painting is primarily inspired by the experience of the harmonious relationship between man and nature. In 1948, he was appointed a teacher at the College of Fine Arts, where he played a significant role in educating a new, progressive generation of painters.
