Endre Rozsda (; 18 November 1913, Mohács – 16 September 1999, Paris) was a Hungarian-French painter.
Life
Endre Rozsda was born in Mohács, a small city along the Danube in Hungary. His childhood memories marked his entire artistic work. The creative method he developed helped him to conjure a unique surrealistic world based on his memories: Out of memory and light I weave a dense fabric. I look steadily at it until it comes to life and stares back at me, until it rises up in front of me. It's time that I want to get hold of, arrange and evaluate. Time is that bright, multi-colored oblivion where joys and sufferings turn into precious beads. Around time's beads I twist the ivy of my own memories. I don't want to assess or explain anything. I want to understand. I lay my head against time and listen to what it tells me.Endre Rozsda: My thoughts In: Rozsda Endre, Hall of Art (Műcsarnok), Budapest, 1998
Rejecting his family's plans for a career, he decided to become a painter at an early age. He acquired the basic skills of the trade in the school of Vilmos Aba-Novák. His first solo exhibition, held in the 'Tamás' gallery at age 23 (1936), was a great success. Critics praised his work and the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest bought one of his paintings. "Rozsda is a stunning major talent. Few have ever painted old women and beggars the way he does. … In some of his beautiful images a veil of fog and light is woven, turning reality into a melodic chimera", a critic writing for Est praised the young painter.
His early artistic period, closely tied to Hungarian post-impressionism, came to an end after attending a Béla Bartók concert. His early successes notwithstanding, after listening to Bartók he came to understand that "I am not my own contemporary".Interview with Endre Rozsda In: Rozsda Endre, Hall of Art (Műcsarnok), Budapest, 1998 With sculptor Lajos Barta, he moved to Paris (1938), where he continued his studies at the École de Louvre. There he befriended Árpád Szenes, Vieira da Silva and Françoise Gilot (later Picasso's companion for a decade) who became his student for a while. He also became acquainted with Max Ernst and Alberto Giacometti. His thinking underwent fundamental change and came closer to Surrealism. Following the German occupation, he was forced to return to Budapest (1943) where his unique surrealistic style fully matured (Sacred and Profane Love, 1947; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon).
After the war, he played an active role in the establishment of the European School and showed his work regularly in group shows. According to art historian, Krisztina Passuth, Endre Rozsda was one of the most prominent figures of the European School.Krisztina Passuth: The Life of Endre Rozsda until 1957, In: Rozsda Endre, Hall of Art (Műcsarnok), Budapest, 1998 In 1948 the group disbanded because the new regime did not tolerate abstract surrealist art. In the next few years Rozsda worked on book illustrations, painted in secret and, obviously, could not show his work in public.
Following the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 he permanently returned to France. He came into contact with Raymond Queneau and André Breton, who wrote an introduction for his exhibition at the ‘Furstenberg’ Gallery (1957). He participated in the International Exhibition of Surrealism in Milan (1961). A few years later he won the Copley-Prize (1964) from a jury composed of Hans Arp, Roberto Matta, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Roland Penrose, Sir Herbert Read and Marcel Duchamp.
From the start of the 1960s, Rozsda's work underwent another change: the tensions and harmonies of architectonic structures and swirling colors created a richly detailed microcosm. In his effort "to control time" and dissolve reality in his imagination he continued to rely on Surrealism, although his means of expression became increasingly characterized by lyrical abstraction.
In 1970 he became a French citizen. In 1979 he set up a studio in Le Bateau-Lavoir and continued to work there until the end of his life.
The last exhibition he attended in person was held in Várfok Gallery and opened by the writer Péter Esterházy (1999): Just like nature itself, these pictures are difficult to disclose. They necessitate absorbed looking, long and silent. (What doesn't…) And still, they speak at the first glance. They obviously don't say the same thing, but they seem to have a common melodic structure. And this common melodic structure – I may be wrong, and once more abusively speak only about myself – is rather anachronistic, does not conform with their time: it seems that Rozsda's pictures say that the world is beautiful. Maybe this is precisely surrealism. Surrealism as ethical attitude?" ... I'd like to wrap my books into these canvases, they would feel good in there.Péter Esterházy: The man in love, in: A szabadság nehéz mámora, Magvető, Budapest, 2003
Rozsda is buried in Montmartre Cemetery, Paris.
From post-Impressionism to Surrealism (1932–1937) Endre Rozsda recalled the beginnings as follows: "I started to learn painting in the Free School of Aba-Novák. I became his apprentice. This was the most important artistic and human experience in all my life. It was a great stroke of luck that I learned painting outside the Academy of Fine Arts were training was extremely academic at the time. Aba-Novák was a good painter, although far from revolutionary. He had a rich and free personality."
Aba-Novák and Rozsda often painted in plein air. Next to his master, he also worked on frescoes decorating churches and public monuments.
His paintings from that time are defined by a sensibility informed by post-Impressionism. Initially, he painted landscapes bathed in mystical and subtle sunlight, as well as thinly painted portraits composed with large color patches. For some time, instead of distancing himself from naturalistic representation, he looked for the next stage of development and a personal vision by applying bold cropping and, after pastel-soft landscapes, by creating at times gloomy and melancholic, at times vigorous and vibrant still lives. Wispy colors were gradually taken over by expressive deep reds, yellows and purples to create tensions. A sensitive representation of everyday objects and people were replaced by suggestive forms painted with a broad brush.
He had his first solo show in the middle of this period in the Tamás Gallery, with a dedication written by Aba-Novák. The Budapest daily Pesti Napló said of Rozsda: He's all but 22 years old and astonishingly talented. Full of energy, subtle tensions, a healthy dose of pride and a keen appetite for experimentation … Clearly, he had excellent schooling: under the tutelage of Aba-Novák he acquired professional skills of the highest order. He draws, paints, models and composes with supreme confidence and clears the initial obstacles of exhilarating and wild exploits with apparent ease. His master is right to claim that Rozsda's developed pictorial vision belies his age.April 26, 1936
His style differed from contemporary academic trends and the avant-garde. During this period, he encountered artistic influences that affected his subsequent work and thematic approach.
The turn to surrealism (1938–1944)
This is how Rozsda recalled this shift: "By pure coincidence, just before my trip to Paris I met two painters, a couple: Imre Ámos and Margit Anna. I had no program for the night. They invited me to a concert at the Academy of Music. ‘Bartók is performing tonight’, they said. Bartók was just a name for me. I had no idea who he was. (...) Bartók played one of his own pieces with his wife: Sonata composed for two pianos and percussions, I believe one of the most important works of the 20th century. It was a world premiere. Where I sat, I had an excellent view of Bartók's hands. I was mesmerized. I had never thought there was music outside of Bach, Mozart and Mussorgsky. I became completely drunk on that music. (...) I understood immediately that I am not my own contemporary."
Endre Rozsda encountered a number of new impulses in the French capital. "After arriving in Paris, I devoured everything that came my way", he said later. With the sculptor, Lajos Barta, he rented a studio on Montparnasse. Finding himself in the vibrant café culture of the late 1930s, soon he made the acquaintance of people who helped him become his "own contemporary". An experimental and self-searching period followed, and in just a few years he left post-Impressionism behind and adopted a nonfigurative style.
This process is well illustrated by his work from that time where figurative representation was gradually replaced by abstraction: Two persons alone (1939), Emperor on the throne (1939–40), Apple bed (1942), A glass of water watches over the birth of a caterpillar (1943), The King of truth (1942).
While he did not join any group of artists, his thinking and temperament drew him close to the surrealists. Rozsda's painting style, developed to bring memories back to the surface and show the hidden connections of the mind, had a strong affinity with the surrealist project and surrealist creative techniques.
After he was forced to leave France following the German occupation (1943) his surrealist painting became fully matured in Budapest. By that time Hungary was at war, new laws disenfranchised Hungarian Jews and the majority of society supported extremist political forces and ideologies. Endre Rozsda's mother was deported in 1944 and he went into hiding to escape persecution. Years earlier he already lost his adored father, who had committed suicide during the great depression.
Surely, personal tragedies and the experienced horrors hardened his resolve to discover worlds not dominated by historical forces and the laws of nature, but instead by the powers of imagination. In his pictures painted in those years time envelopes, as in a fabric teeming with life, the fossilized forms of reality transformed deep in the subconscious. The horrors of war also appeared on his canvases: Death dance (1946-1947), My first steps in hell (1947), Returning ghost (1951), Martyred children in paradise (1958). "Images saturated with incandescent and dark colors reflecting Rozsda’s existential anguish and the historical drama which surrounded him" Françoise Gilot said, who also believed that this period represented Endre Rozsda's “real descent to Hell”.Françoise Gilot: A Painter’s Painter, in: Rozsda 100, Várfok Gallery, Budapest, 2013
European School (1945–1948) In pre-war Hungary few people showed interest in abstract and surrealist art. When, after returning from Paris in 1943, Rozsda showed his work, critics were confused. "Yet another abstract show. Not long ago, involving an exhibition in ‘Alkotás Művészház’, we gave a cursory overview of abstraction, i.e., an art form devoid of any sense of reality and the pastime of a bygone generation", one of them wrote.
In this climate a few artists decided to establish a new grouping with the primary objective of adopting contemporary European artistic trends and presenting them to the Hungarian public. In the euphoria following liberation and the hope of a new start after the war they were free to give public lectures, create art and put on regular shows.
"Rozsda was one of the most prominent figures of the European School born in 1945", art historian, Krisztina Passuth wrote. Looking at his treatment of space and the picture plane, Passuth also drew a parallel between the creative approaches of Rozsda and Max Ernst. In her view that was all the more interesting as in those years they had not seen each other's work. "Rozsda's compositions appear to be covered by tiny fluffs, feathers or extremely thin veils. The swirling, disintegrating and then recombining motifs and particles work through their motion, there are no exact contours, there is no beginning or end", she wrote.