Zebegény (1955)

Dezső Végh was not spared by fate. He was one of those who fought in both world wars. He interrupted his studies in architecture at the Technical University of Budapest during the First World War. In 1921, he went to Italy to study graphic arts at the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Rome, under the guidance of Professor C. A. Petrucci. From 1924 he worked as a graphic designer and advertising designer for various Italian companies. He worked for Il primato artisco italiano in Milan, the Cirio cannery in Turin and the Gross-Monti printing house. He is credited with the design of several famous posters. He also sent illustrations to Hungarian illustrated magazines. 

In the late twenties he moved to France. In Paris, he studied fashion design at Patou, set and costume design and stage design with the Russian artists Komisarjevsky and Georges Pitojeff. He put his experience to good use at the world-famous fashion magazine Vogue and at the experimental theatre named after Edward VII. Pierre Renoir, Ludmilla Pitojeff, Jouvet and Jean Cocteau, among others, worked for this theatre. He met Utrillo in Paris and became close friends with Pierre Bonnard. It was also in Paris that his painterly work was completed, moving from Impressionism to Constructivism. 

In 1936 he returned to Hungary, where he had to start all over again. As a graphic designer he worked on book covers and illustrations for various publishers. After the Second World War, he worked as a designer for the Kispest Textile Factory and then as a graphic designer for the State Institute of Child Psychology in Budapest. From 1953 until his retirement he was a set and costume designer at the State Puppet Theatre. He regularly participated in art exhibitions in Pest County (Vác, Esztergom, Szentendre). 

According to a report, on 28 April 1956 Végh opened an exhibition in the Vak Bottyán Museum in Vác, where he showed his book illustrations, title cards, textile designs and theatre decorations. Zebegény (1955), now on view, would presumably have been too garish for the brownish-grey world of the time, and would not have been exhibited. In Végh's painting, he creates a 'mise en abyme' situation by placing the viewpoint on the veranda of the house. This frames the view, giving a sense of the space inside and outside, and the ultramarine frames the coolness radiating from the stone walls of the house, in contrast to the sunny, warm late spring, sparkling summer sun.