FÓNYI, Géza
(1899, Trencsén - 1971, Budapest)



Géza Fónzi (Friml), painter, mosaic artist. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts from 1917 to 1925, and as a student of Oszkár Glatz he graduated as an art teacher in 1921, then he became a student of Ágoston Benkhard in the school of painting. Influenced by his master's art, his early works were inspired by the approach of plein air painting of Nagybánya (Baia Mare, Romania). After graduation he made a study-tour of Vienna, and later travelled to Paris, London and Firenze. During his study tours he was greatly impressed first by Cézanne and then Braque, apart from the masters of earlier ages. He taught art in the Kölcsey Grammar School from 1930 to 1938, and in the Budapest Technical University from 1938 onward. He spent every summer in Tihany in the thirties. He was a member of both the New Society of Artists and the New Artist Union. He worked in the Collegium Hungaricum of Rome in 1936-37 on a stipend.

Influenced by the experience of classic art, his figurative pictures were characterised by monumentality built from compact forms, while his landscapes were characterised by strong contours and sombre colouring. He started to use mosaic after his trip to Italy. He made his first mosaic piece in 1942. As a technical innovation, he used 'metlachi' mosaic. He undertook the realisation of a number of big mural pieces. After 1945 he worked in Szentendre during the summers, and from 1946 he was a member of the Old Colony of Artists at Szentendre. The second half of the forties marked one of the most prolific periods of the painter. His themes of everyday life are reflections of the artist's immediate surroundings. The paintings of this period display colourful still-lifes of predominantly fruit-trays, while his charcoal drawings show to the viewer the intimate details of his studio interior. Fónyi's art maintained its typical selection of themes and colouration later also. The painter's oeuvre reached its pinnacle in the sixties.



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