Bucolic scene (1910-es évek eleje)

Between 1904 and 1908 Mihály Bíró studied sculpture at the School of Applied Arts under Imre Simay, then in 1909 he travelled to England on a scholarship to train at C. R. Ahsbee's workshop in Campeden. During his stay in England he won a poster competition for The Studio magazine, which led him to turn his attention to applied graphics. His solo exhibitions were at the Kunsthaus in 1913 and at the Ernst Museum in 1917. Between 1910 and 1919, he produced some thirty political and nearly one hundred commercial and cultural posters in the strident spirit of Art Nouveau, more than one of which is considered to be the forerunner of modern Hungarian poster art. His symbolic political posters (Republic!, Red Parliament!, 1 May 1919), which are internationally acclaimed, were created during the months of the Peach Revolution and the Soviet Republic, when he was a government commissioner and the visual designer of the festivities. 

He was forced to emigrate after the fall, living in Vienna, Berlin, Prague and Paris as a journalist, book designer and supplier of commercial posters. In his work of this period, the earlier vehemesque expression was replaced by a more objective, narrative tone, a more detailed and decorative style of drawing (Modiano, Abadie, etc.). Sick, he returned home in 1947 with the help of the Social Democratic Party. His memorial exhibition was organised by the Hungarian National Gallery in 1967 and by the Museum of the Labour Movement in 1978 and 1986. The latter was also shown in Vienna.

Bíró's paintings and drawings of peasants reaping and ploughing in the 1910s are reminiscent of his later depictions of labourers. In the Bucolic Scene, we see none other than the 'red hammer man', known from his famous political posters, in a different setting and formulation. The original model was the world champion wrestler Tibor Fischer, whom Bíró met after a competition in 1910. When the artist, who had originally set out to become a sculptor, met the wrestler, who was huge in stature, well muscled and well built, he asked him to pose as a model for his nude studies. Subsequently, Tibor Fischer regularly visited the artist's studio at 9 Visegrádi Street, where Mihály Biró made sketches and studies of him in various postures. The figure of a man with long limbs, broad shoulders, a distinctive skull and strong muscles now appears in a peasant setting as a staffage figure, frolicking with a girl at the base of a boglya during a midday rest. Bíró applies a thick layer of paint and uses bright, glowing colours. The boglya rises like a pyramid above the couple in the middle of the picture, surrounded by an idyllic setting.