Biography
József Nemes Lampérth was a modern Hungarian painter and graphic artist. At the beginning of the 20th century, he was one of the most original individuals of the Hungarian avant-garde. His family name was originally Lampérth, and he took the first name Nemes as his stage name. He studied with Manó Vesztróczy at the School of Applied Arts in Budapest, then with István Bosznai and Tivadar Zemplényi at the Academy of Fine Arts, but their naturalistic and academic style did not satisfy Nemes Lampérth's taste, so he first went to paint at the Nagybánya artist colony, and then to Paris in 1913. His left hand was paralyzed as a result of his wounds in the First World War, and he was demobilized in 1916.
He developed his unique style in Nagybány and Paris, with which he became one of the most original individuals of the Hungarian avant-garde of the turn of the century. His powerfully constructed pictures are stretched by unparalleled dynamism, his ink drawings shape space with the dark-light contrast, the almost brutal treatment of materials, and the rhythm of broad brushstrokes. His style is related to the aspirations of Cezanne, the Fauves and Die Brücke. More and more attention was paid to his paintings and drawings, and more and more of his drawings were published by the magazine Ma, edited and published by Lajos Kassák, thus Nemes Lampérth became part of the circle of supporters of Hungarian activism.
Nemes Lampérth was equally at home in portrait, landscape and nude painting, and even has still lifes. In 1917, he participated in the Youth Exhibition in the National Salon, and in 1918, in Ma III. demonstrative exhibition. In 1919, he helped the council government's propaganda with his mobilizing poster drawings. Made together with Ismert János Kmetty Be! poster, which mobilized for the armed defense of the commune.
During the Commune, he was appointed as a teacher at the Proletar Fine Arts Academy, after the fall of the Commune he was arrested, in 1920 he managed to emigrate to Berlin, where he held a very successful exhibition in the Gurlitt-Galerie. At this exhibition, he met the Swedish patron Alfred Gustav Ekström, traveled with him to Sweden, and continued to paint there, but he soon had a nervous breakdown, his powerful, synthetically simplifying charcoal drawings became more and more gloomy, and the impending doom struck them.
He was admitted to a mental institution in Sweden, then in Hungary, and died at home in the mental institution in Sátoraljaújhely. He was allowed to draw all the time, in this respect he was much luckier than Mihály Munkácsy, who was deprived of the opportunity to practice his art by his doctors in the last four years of his life.