Jeune Fille au Challe, c. 1925
gouache on paper
approx. 32" x 23"
Untitled, c. 1930
charcoal on paper
11" x 15"
Béla Kádár (1877-1956) was a Hungarian painter influenced by Der Blaue Reiter, Cubism, Futurism, Neo-Primitivism, Constructivism, and Metaphysical painting. Kádár was born into a working-class Jewish family, and after only six years of schooling he was apprenticed as an iron-turner. His art career began when he painted murals in Budapest. Kádár's work incorporates romantic and decorative imagery with elements of Hungarian folklore and peasant life. After visiting Paris and Berlin in 1910, he permanently moved to western Europe in 1918. His first important exhibition was in October 1923 at Herwarth Walden's Galerie Der Sturm, in Berlin, where he showed expressionist-influenced work. In Berlin Kádár met Katherine Dreier from the Société Anonyme who put on two exhibitions of his work at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York.
Kádár's work can be found at the Brooklyn Museum, The Jewish Museum in New York, Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest, Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid, the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, and others.
