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For a great part of his life, János Nagy Balogh lived in conditions of extreme poverty and earned his living as a decorator. He had hardly any formal education, being a self-taught man. His art bears a slight resemblance to early Cubism and his best works have a constructive arrangement, sound composition and blunt, light colours.
He painted a long series of self-portraits, and his mother also sat for him on many occasions. Thei home and modest possessions were the subject of many of his works. Between 1910 and 1914 he painted a great series of navvies, and this forms a significant part of his oeuvre. The series was inspired by the building of the Wekerle estate near their home in Kispest, a poor suburb of Budapest. Nagy Balogh spent most of his time among the workmen, making colour sketches and study drawings of the labouring navvies as they pushed wheelbarrows and shovelled and flattened the suburban ground. This work, "Navvies", shows the strong influence of Millet's art. It is characterized by a logical, simple arrangement, a simplification of visual sensation, and emphatic block-life forms.
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