Miklos Nemeth
Miklós Németh was born in the shimmering streets of Budapest, that magical city on the banks of the Danube, in 1934. This vibrant metropolis seemed destined from birth to plant the seeds of art in his heart. From 1950 to 1954, he sought the wisdom of brushstrokes at Ödön Márffy’s free art school, an oasis of creativity and inspiration.
Early in his life, he met the shining stars of the art scene and was warmed by their radiance and ideas. His close collaboration with greats such as István Szönyi, Oszkár Glatz, János Kmetty and Ményhert Tóth shaped his artistic path, a journey into the depths of creativity.
In the years from 1957 to 1980, he embarked on an odyssey to the artists’ colonies of Hungary, where his soul and his brush seemed to dance in symbiosis. In 1958, he united his life with the gifted painter Ilona Benkö, who shared not only his love but also three wonderful children with him.
His art knew no boundaries, no barriers. It transcended national borders and conquered hearts in Moscow, Dresden and Brno on international stages. In 1981, Miklós Németh was accepted into the National Association of Hungarian Artists as a registered artist, an honor that elevated his art to the heights of recognition. In 1992, the Association of Hungarian Painters elected him as one of their own.
His works unfolded on the canvases of the Kunsthalle Budapest in 1981 and conquered the Ernst Museum in 2000, but the life that shone like a canvas also carried dark colors. The year 2000 brought the tragic loss of his beloved wife Ilona, a shadow on his artistic sunrise.
But art and life go hand in hand, and in 2006 he was awarded the Ilosvai István Varga Prize of the city of Szentendre in recognition of his passionate work. The fall of 2008 brought another solo exhibition at the St. Pölten City Museum, another highlight in his impressive career.
But like all stories, this one also has an end. On February 23, 2012, the canvas of life faded for the artist Miklós Németh, but his legacy lives on in every brushstroke, in every passionate color he gave to the world.
Surrounded by renowned painters from an early age, Miklós Németh soon developed his own style of treating the color and surface of his painting grounds. His subjective, intense choice of color and his impulsive way of working, producing series of evolving pictures instead of painting studies and later corrections, are characteristic of his passionate, dynamic handling of the brush.
Rejecting socialist realism, Miklós Németh oriented himself towards Western styles and chose an objective way of depicting his preferred subjects such as nature, (urban) landscapes, in which people are almost always to be found, working people, the female body and portraits.
He found his motifs in the garden of his parents’ villa on the Buda side with flowers and fruit trees and the view of the mountains from there. He particularly enjoyed being out in the countryside with his easel, painting bridges, mountains and the Danube.
His paintings always reflect his pantheistic view and his coloristic nature.
As an artist guided by inner images and inspired by the colors of cooling lava from the very beginning of his artistic career, Miklós Németh sees himself as the “painter of the volcano”. An artist whose life and work have merged together like the colors on his palette, a true masterpiece of art history.