Suburb (1922)

Lajos Csabai-Ékes worked as a title painter in his father's workshop. In addition to the School of Applied Arts, he also attended the College of Fine Arts, where he was a student of István Réti, and then attended the free school of Károly Kernstok. He went from the school desk to the battlefield and was a reserve lieutenant in World War I. In 1919 he opened a school of drawing, painting and applied arts in Budapest. In the 1920s he studied in Italy and Germany. He designed film posters, book covers and illustrations. He worked extensively for the Kner Printing Company in Gyoma. He was a founding member of the Hungarian Society of Book and Advertising Artists. In 1925 he exhibited his title plates, book illustrations and graphics at the Mentor bookshop. His works were exhibited at the Kunsthalle and the National Salon, but also abroad. Several times he was called up for labour service. In the summer of 1944 he disappeared in Budapest. In 1947, the Budapest Centre for Popular Culture organised a memorial exhibition of his works.

He named his school as L'Art and Ékes, and the workshop was first located in a block of the Palatinus Houses on the Pest side of Margaret Bridge, then at 16 Váci út. The school was originally founded by his brother in 1913, but when his brother left for Paris, Lajos took over the management and started an independent teaching programme. He taught at least forty subjects for more than two decades. He taught decorative painting, graphic arts, poster design, illustration, porcelain painting and small sculpture. The fine arts course offered nude, head and still life drawing, composition and illustration. The richness of the school's programme is testimony to Csabai-Ékes's uniquely wide-ranging teaching repertoire. From the very beginning, as long as he was allowed to teach, he never changed his approach. The effectiveness of his teaching is more than attested to by the later work, success and reputation of some of his former pupils. 

Csabai-Ékes was a representative of progressive Hungarian art between the two world wars. In his unique prints he combined stylistic features of Cubism and Expressionism. His black-and-white ink-painting, the Suburb (1922) is related to the contemporary graphic art of János Kmetty, József Nemes Lampérth and János Schadl, which are characterised by geometric analysis of the view, compression and expressive line drawing. Using simple means, Csabai-Ékes is able to capture the ambivalences of the modern and constantly developing, transforming cities of the 20th century, where past and present (see the tenement building towering over the old house), intimacy and alienation, decline and progress were still present together.