Female painter (around 1932)

He studied with István Réti at the college, and it was with him that he learned the Nagybánya tradition, which is reflected in his love of landscape, light and natural waters in his painting. His pearlescent landscapes echo the Bastien-lepage example. In 1924 he was awarded a scholarship to Rome. His first collective exhibition was in Berlin in 1928. From 1929 he spent a few years at the Szolnok Artists' Centre. This was the other school besides Nagybánya, which decisively influenced the development of modern, distinctively Hungarian painting and the style of Dénes Förstner. 1932 and 1934 he had a collective exhibition at the Ernst Museum. 1938 he had a solo exhibition at the Tamás Gallery, 1942 at the Fészek Artists' Club, 1944 at the Műbarát.  

Dénes Förstner's art was initially influenced by the early prints of Béla Uitz and later by István Szőnyi. A large part of his work was taken to Canada by his family, and reproductions and some of his original paintings were exhibited in Zebegény in 1983. It was here that the Female Painter, which had previously been included in two collective exhibitions of Förstner's, entitled Red Bloused Woman in 1932, was shown. The journal Művészet wrote of the painting: 'it depicts a young woman in a red dress painting in a studio interior. The golden colour of her drawing provides the background for her figure, lending an almost Byzantine icon solemnity to the poor surroundings." Förstner's early paintings are striking for the plasticity of their forms, which he reinforces by omitting half-tones. The puritanism and neutrality of the background, the emptiness of the canvas, are all there to allow the red and blue complementaries to prevail.