Landscape of Lake Balaton (1932)

He studied at the College of Fine Arts between 1926 and 1932. The Balló scholarship gave Éless the opportunity to train in the art centres of Europe, in Paris, Munich and Leipzig. In the 1930s he ran a free school in Wekerle Street. In 1942 he had a group exhibition with Menyhert Tóth in the exhibition space of the Műbarát. In the same year he was commissioned to paint the portrait of Miklós Horthy. In 1943, he exhibited his paintings on Italian themes at the National Salon. In early 1945 he left Hungary with his wife. He settled first in Denmark, then in Switzerland from 1947. In Switzerland he was president of the Hungarian Association of Aargau. He is buried in Wettingen. 

István Éless exhibited mainly watercolours and charcoal drawings. Contemporary critics praised his Japanese lightness of touch and the breathlessness with which he applied his forms and colours to paper. Lake Balaton was a recurring theme for Éless. In his very early the Landscape of Lake Balaton (1932), now on view, he is able to effortlessly transform watercolour technique, composed in larger patches, into oil, and convey an ethereal mood with colour transitions of turquoise and green, white and dark grey.

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