Butcher Shop (1935 körül)

Erzsébet Lóránt studied at the College of Fine Arts between 1916 and 1924, under the tutelage of Oszkár Glatz and István Csók. In 1925, she was included in the exhibition of the Szinyei Merse Pál Society's prizewinners. In 1933, 1934 and 1936 she exhibited regularly at the exhibitions of the Hungarian Women Artists' Association at the National Salon. In 1939 one of her paintings was selected for the Riverside Museum in New York. 

Her greatest successes came in the 1930s. István Genthon considered her a 'virtuoso painter'. Based on the titles of her paintings, her works can be divided into two major groups. The first group consists of works depicting the modern metropolis and the new entertainment possibilities for city dwellers (Card Game, Jazz, Habitué in the Local, Piano Concert), while the second group consists of paintings representing the inhabitants of the suburbs and the social problems of metropolises (Nude with Mirror, Struggle, Chicken, Slaughter, Baggage Carriers, Street Life). She consciously distances herself from the stereotypically perceived 'feminine' painting. Her paintings are characterised by diagonal composition, bold cuts and distortions, the swirling of inner tension, the swirling lines, the rawness of the painting style, which show affinities with the Eight, but even more with the Fauves and Expressionist works of Sándor Galimberti and Valeria Dénes. At the turn of the millennium, in their rediscovery of the female Eight and women's art, Lóránt and Márton Piroska Futásfalvi were referred to by critics as "Feminine Fauves". 

The Butcher Shop (c. 1935) is one of Lóránt's works dealing with modern urban themes. The three women in the painting are highlighted in different positions and colours (red, blue, green). Their figures are exaggerated, but they embody the modern, elegant types of women of the time (the housewife and the shop assistant). In the lower left corner of the painting, a white dog clings to the butcher's counter, sniffing out the delicious morsels. Around them, the colouring, the reds, oranges, pinks and purples, all evoke an image of raw meat, which, with the fluidity of the composition (there is no single line perpendicular or horizontal to the picture plane) and the rawness of the painting technique, links Lorentz's picture to Expressionism.