Strike (1933)

He was awarded his doctorate in 1927. He studied at art colleges in Budapest, Berlin, Vienna and New York. In Berlin he became involved with the group Der Sturm. The journal, which also ran a renowned gallery, was an important publication forum for the international avant-garde movement. Its influence on his entire oeuvre was decisive. In 1929 he moved to the USA. He became a professor in the dermatology clinic of the New York University School of Advanced Medical Studies. From 1950 he was Professor of Dermatology and Director of the Dermatology Clinic at New York University until his retirement. From 1942 to 1946 he served as a major in the US Army in the Mediterranean theatre of operations. His most important and highly publicised exhibition was at the Contemporary Arts in New York in 1935, one of the most prestigious art salons in the USA, but he also participated in many other exhibitions, including the International Watercolour Exhibition at the World's Fair in Chicago. He was a member of the oldest American artists' club (Salmagundi Club), which also organised an exhibition of his work. After the war, he began to work in printmaking - choosing abstract imagery as his form of expression. In the 1960s, he published a number of portfolios of colour woodcuts. In his paintings, even in the 1980s, he often used foreign materials (bricks, sand, found objects, etc.).

Ladányi was introduced to the international avant-garde movements in Berlin through Herwarth Walden and his gallery Der Strurm. He was primarily influenced by the formal language of German Expressionism. Expressionist art projected the inner vision of man. They looked to Japanese woodcuts, the art of African primitive peoples in the South Seas, the works of Munch, Van Gogh and Gauguin, and the religious German prints of the 15th and 16th centuries as their inspiration. Linocut was one of their favourite graphic techniques. The Strike can best be compared with the similarly themed prints of Kathe Kollwitz. Kollwitz showed solidarity with the poor, the hungry and the victims of war. Ladányi's woodcuts are also characterised by primitive shapes, monumental figures, compression and a social, anti-war theme. Ladányi's Strike is on the cover of the literary and social journal Kulturharc 1933/3, and a copy of it is in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.