UITZ, Béla
(1887, Mehala - 1972, Budapest)



Painter, graphic artist. Uitz, the son of a peasant family with many children, worked as an engine fitter for three years. He studied at the School of Design and at the Art School. He spent the summer of 1916 in Kecskemét ("Apple Pickers", 1916). His art was influenced by Cézanne, Goya and Picasso. His expressive, monumental tint-drawings show the influence of József Nemes-Lampérth, a friend of his.

After the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, he was arrested and then emigrated to Vienna in 1920. He was more and more engaged in cubism and the problem of warm and cold colours. In 1921 he travelled to Moscow via Berlin. He was influenced by Russian constructivism and started to analyze forms following Rotschenkow's example ("Analysis Series", 1922). In the hope of orders to paint frescoes, he travelled to London. From October 1924 onwards, he worked in France for two years. He painted series of pictures on his experiences in Paris (pictures of towns and gothic buildings). He did larges scale tint-drawings based on basic colours in Collioure, South-France, in 1926.

He lived in the Soviet Union from 1926 onwards where he was a teacher at a Moscow school until 1930 when it was closed down. He started to draw again and was in search of realistic portrayal. His attention was focused on frescoes and received an order to paint frescoes for the building of the Kirghizean government in 1936 which were realized in the style of classical renaissance. He was arrested on false charges in 1938 but he returned to Moscow a year later. His art became more and more formal. In his last frescoes never finished, he wanted to paint the fight of the proletariat ("From Chains to Stars", 1959-70). It was his early art only which was related to Hungarian art.



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