Bela Kadar

An outstanding Hungarian artist of Jewish origin, one of the most famous representatives of the Hungarian avant-garde of the first half of the 20th century. He was born to a working-class Jewish family. Using the aesthetics and techniques of a number of modern movements, Bela Kadar created powerful images based on the Magyar (Hungarian) culture and legends. The artist was a member of popular Berlin art group “Der Sturm”, his works were exhibited in Europe and America, were bought by the national museum of Hungary and remain in demand in the world to this day.

His favorite plots were those with galloping horses, toy horses or statuettes appearing in urban and interior paintings, portraits and landscapes. Another motif, often reproduced by the artist, is music. His naked women were depicted with guitars and other instruments in the most unexpected ways. The master’s pictures with subjects written in a light manner became widely famous – they provided a viewer with aesthetic pleasure and easily fit into any interior. Today, his paintings are in many private and public collections around the world, including the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest.

Key Ideas:

– Bela Kadar joined the adherents of the Cubist manner at a time when the aesthetics of this style had already passed the stages of Analytical and Synthetic Cubism. However, the style continued to evolve and take individual forms in different countries, while preserving the basic principles – clarity and a sense of order, the desire to show the depicted object from various points of view.

– Before the Second World War Kadar created bright and bizarre pictures in gouache, oil and watercolor paints depicting different aspects of Eastern European life. Those are funny landscapes and images of culture and peasant life, but mostly urban plots with women and animals.
– The artist often combined a still life and an image of a man in one painting.

– By their nature and power of influence on the viewer, Kadar’s works were close to expressionistic. At the same time the artist took the techniques of different styles – a number of methods from Futurism and Cubism, including Orphism, and also from Constructivism and Neo-primitivism. Kadar, experimenting, formed his own special, somewhat playful style.

– During his stay in Berlin, the artist gradually changed his emotionally charged and powerful, almost graphic tone to a more romantic mood. Kadar used fashion for elements of fantasy, folk tale and myth as an organic component for his art.

– Depicting scenes with elegant abstract figures of mysterious ladies and expressive villagers, almost always accompanied by animals (“Bride with a cat”, “Milkmaid and cows”), the artist chose a radiant, but gentle palette. The figures were often arranged on a pearly gray abstract background.

– Being familiar with Futurism, the artist preferred to depict the movement. He did it masterfully and with great expression.