Japanese girl (Around 1935)

Henrik Ripszám had a very adventurous life. Before the outbreak of the First World War, he travelled around Northern Europe on sporting and artistic study trips, was captured during the war and spent seven years as a prisoner of war in a Siberian prison camp. He then lived in Sweden and South America, travelled to the Himalayas, Japan and India, and exhibited in Stockholm, Paris and London. He exhibited his memories of his trip to Asia, first in Paris and then at home. 'In fact, the best of his art is to be found in his watercolours, where his manner is artistic and individual. He makes effective use of omissions between his patches of colour, he gives a sense of the lightness of the paper, most of the time giving the drawing a sense of this, but his colour harmonies are also prominent. His watercolours painted in Japan, with their humid subtleties, recall the works of the art of that country', wrote the journal Budapesti Hírlap about his appearance at the Ernst Museum exhibition in 1938.