Vintage Mid Century Surreal Abstract Etching by Lajos Kondor

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Vintage Surreal modernist etching by Lajos Kondor (Hungarian, 1926–2006). Lajos Kondor was a printmaker and children’s book illustrator. A Hungarian … Read more Vintage Surreal modernist etching by Lajos Kondor (Hungarian, 1926–2006). Lajos Kondor was a printmaker and children’s book illustrator. A Hungarian painter, and avant-garde graphic artist. Signed lower right, titled lower left. Image 18"L x 14"H. Unframed. Overall sheet size 24ʺW × 0.1ʺD × 20ʺH.
Biography:

Lajos Kondor was born in Budapest, Hungary on June 25th, 1926. His childhood and teens in war-torn Europe shaped his artistic aesthetic early on, and he attended the College of Applied Arts (now the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design) in 1945, graduating four years later. Two of his teachers, Gyula Hincz and György Konecsni, had a huge impact on him, encouraging him to explore surrealist elements and express his emotions through illustration rather than painting. After a chance meeting with an author seeking illustrations for his book, he soon embarked on a career working for others as well as writing and illustrating his own children’s stories. He won the Most Beautiful Book of the Year Award in 1958 and 1959, and was awarded the Mihály Munkácsy Prize for outstanding artistic achievement in 1960. In addition to surrealism, his work began to incorporate more and more socialist realism into his work, and he received a silver cup at the Vignola Graphic Art Exhibition in 1968. He had been exhibiting regularly at museums and galleries in his home country since 1948, and in the late 1960s he began holding solo exhibitions in Italy and Germany as well. Throughout the 70s and 80s he participated in group exhibitions in Paris, Berlin, Rome, and at the British International Print Biennale. Although he found great appreciation in Russia and Eastern Europe, the collapse of the Soviet Union led to economic instability throughout the region, and Kondor retreated from public life due to a shift in children’s literature tastes as well as diminishing health. He died at his home on February 22nd, 2006, and was “rediscovered” by Western art critics in the early 2010s. See less