Biography
Árpád Basch began his art studies at Simon Hollósy's school in Munich. Upon returning home, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest under Bertalan Karlovszky. From 1893, he stayed abroad for three years: he trained in Paris, where he was, among others, a student of Jean-Paul Laurens, and finished his studies in Italy.
In 1896, he became the art editor of the illustrated magazine Magyar Géniusz in Budapest. At the age of sixteen, he exhibited his first painting in the Art Gallery (Műcsarnok), where he often exhibited later. In the beginning, he worked with watercolor painting and applied graphics: his posters were of pioneering importance in the Hungarian artistic life. He created many book illustrations, for example for Ferenc Herczeg's, and translated foreign books, such as Lev Tolstoy's and Charles Dickens' works.
Later, instead of graphics, he became more interested in the problems of painting. He started painting portraits, landscapes, and large compositions. For the Millenium celebrations, he created the painting At the courtyard of Lajos Rákóczi XIV. He also painted the portraits of King Károly IV. and Queen Zita. With the Second World War, his painting was expanded with a new subject. His largest painting was a 12-meter-long, 6-meter-high triptych entitled Defenders of the Carpathians. In 1917, he was awarded the Ferenc József Order for his war pictures. His art was praised by domestic and foreign magazines.
After several appearances abroad, he first presented his work at a solo exhibition in Budapest in 1925: a large-scale exhibition of his oil paintings and drawings in the National Salon. In 1927, he appeared again at the collection exhibition at the National Salon with his small-scale paintings, which summarized the works of his three decades.
His works can be found in the National Gallery.
