Biography
Béla Kádár was a Hungarian painter. A significant representative of the Hungarian avant-garde of the 20th century. He was born into a poor Jewish family and grew up in a bilingual (German and Hungarian) environment. At the age of twenty, he set out on foot to the west, visiting several major cities in Europe, such as Munich and Paris. It was then that he decided to become a painter.
In 1899, at the age of 22, he began his studies of fine arts at the School of Industrial Design in Budapest, from the 1902/03 school year he studied at the School of Drawing under the guidance of Ede Balló. In 1904, he attended free schools in Munich and Budapest. As early as 1906, his drawings and pastels were featured in the periodical exhibitions of the Műcsarnok and the National Salon. In 1911, he worked with a scholarship at the artist colony in Szolnok. The beginning of his career as a painter was characterized by the search for a way, in addition to Béla Iványi-Grünwald and the neos, his work was influenced by the compositional solutions and color scheme of József Rippl-Rónai's interior paintings. He also paid attention to the pictures displayed at the international exhibitions in Budapest, the pictures of the Nabis group and the painting style of the post-impressionists piqued his interest. He made a lifelong friendship with the art writer Miklós Rózsa, and had many exhibition and work opportunities in his Art Gallery. Noble Marcell awarded the mural designs created for the Rózsa utca palace of the Művészház with a prize of one thousand crowns.
He also monitored the results of the Eight, especially the direction of Paul Cezanne influences. In the 1910s, he worked in one of the studios of the Százados úti artist colony. In 1914, the Magyar Theater was rebuilt and renovated based on the plans of László Vágó, in which Béla Kádár was commissioned to create the ceiling fresco (it has since been destroyed). He also created the murals of Erzsébet Sósfürdő in 1918 (demolished since then). At the end of the First World War, he had solo exhibitions in the Ernst Museum and the Studio Gallery.
Coming into contact with the forums of the direction of activism, he came under the influence of expressionism. In 1921, together with Hugo Scheiber, he had an exhibition of his expressionist works in Vienna. In 1922, he presented himself at Belvedere in Budapest, and Iván Hevesy wrote a volume about his art. In 1923 and 1924, his pictures were already exhibited at the most important exhibition place of German expressionism, the Der Sturm gallery in Berlin. After his solo presentation, Herwarth Walden invited him to several group exhibitions, so he was able to present himself in the USA in 1928, and he also traveled there.
In the 1930s, he came under the influence of the Italian Novecento and the neoclassical direction of the corresponding domestic Roman school, and painted his figural compositions in an art deco style enriched with classicizing features, with which he was a great success both among his fellow artists and the public. He was regularly featured in the temporary exhibitions of the Tamás Gallery. Approaching World War II, he and his family had to go into hiding due to racial persecution, his wife and both sons became victims of the Holocaust. The II. After World War II, he combined his earlier style features in his works, becoming more and more decorative. After 1949, excluded from artistic public life, he died in solitude.