Conversation at the Table (1941)

A self-taught artist. He worked as a clerk in the Egyesült Izzó in Budapest. In the 1930s he was goalkeeper for the Austrian handball team Hakoah Wien and later for UTE (Újpest Gymnastics Club). In 1934 he was a founding member of the Socialist Artists' Group. He participated in the Group's exhibitions at home and abroad. His works were included in the album 18 Artists 48 Drawings (Unitas edition, 1942). He participated in exhibitions at the KUT (National Salon, 1942), OMIKE (OMIKE Üllői út, 1942) and the Social Democratic Party (Vasas Headquarters, 1942). Béla Fekete Nagy remembered him as someone who argued little and worked a lot - drawing, lino-cutting. He was first called up for labour service in 1941, in Aszód with Imre Ámos and Endre Bálint. During the breaks from labour service, he was an instructor at the drawing school set up by the Socialist Artists' Group. He died in 1944 in Ukraine. 

Most of Schnitzler's work, mainly paintings, was destroyed when a bomb hit their house. His relatives have only one portfolio of his artistic legacy, a collection of drawings and prints in a wide variety of techniques, which were first exhibited in 1991 at the Óbuda Society Gallery. The works, typically produced between 1936 and 1942, reveal a difficult and troubled life and artistic career. Commenting on the 1991 exhibition, Albert Kováts wrote: 'Schnitzler's art enriches our picture of Hungarian art before the World War with original, hitherto almost completely unknown features. His stylistic world fits in with the current of Mednyánszky, István Nagy and the early Egry, which was characterised by gloom, a stifled air, a plebeian temper and sometimes a quiet, moody social commentary, which was also characteristic of a section of the socialist group of artists'. 

In the Conversation at the Table, the expressive agitation of line and colouring contrasts with the choice of subject, the peaceful conversation of the women. It is this apparent contradiction between expression and subject that is particularly interesting in the picture. This kind of haste and expressiveness can also be observed in the contemporary works of his contemporaries (e.g. Lajos Vajda, Imre Ámos), and thus becomes almost a content element, a means of capturing the decaying, decaying world.