3973 - Ödön Marffy, attributed, Old Woman Sewing

Ödön Marffy, attributed, Old Woman Sewing A view of an interior, showing an old woman in an armchair beneath a floor lamp, absorbed in her needlework; rendered in a sketchy, lively style using mixed media (pencil, charcoal and pastel) on grey-tinted paper, mid-20th century, probably indistinctly signed ‘Marffy …’ in the top right-hand corner, on the reverse, fragmentary Hungarian and Italian stamps on the edge of the sheet; mounted somewhat unprofessionally in an old passe-partout; here, a sticker on the reverse reading ‘Artbureau Budapest - H. - 1390 Budapest 62, No 167. Münnich F. U. 31 - Hungary Hongrie Ungarn”, also titled here in pencil “Old Woman Sewing” and bearing a Hungarian export stamp “Kivitelre engedélyezve MNG [Eng.: Approved for export MNG]”, Signs of age and mounting; mounted behind glass in a frame with a private dedication from ‘Erika and Werner’ dated 1978; mat cut-out approx. 30 x 23 cm. Artist information: born Ödön Márffy (German: Edmund Marffy), Hungarian painter, draughtsman and printmaker (1878, Budapest - 1959, Budapest); initially trained as an artist in Hungary; from 1902 to 1906, studied in Paris on a scholarship from the Budapest City Council; where he was a pupil of Jean-Paul Laurens at the Académie Julian; subsequently studied for four years at the Beaux-Arts de Paris under Fernand Cormon; in Paris, he turned towards modernism, influenced by the art of the Fauves and by Henri Matisse, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne and Pierre Bonnard; whilst in Paris, he became acquainted with avant-garde Hungarian artists, as well as the composer Béla Bartók and the poet Endre Ady; in 1906, he exhibited at the Salon d’Automne, returned to Budapest in 1906, where, following an exhibition, he was awarded the ‘Franz Joseph Coronation Anniversary Prize’, which enabled him to spend time in Italy and Dalmatia, In 1908, he was in Neudorf an der Donau with Károly Kernstok and became a founding member of the artists’ organisation “MIÉNK [Magyar Impressionisták és Naturalisták Köre - Circle of Hungarian Impressionists and Naturalists]”, 1909: Founding member of the Hungarian avant-garde artists’ group “The Eight [Hungarian: Nyolcak]”, 1924: Founding member and, from 1927 to 1937, president of the KUT [New Society of Visual Artists], 1928: travelled to the USA and exhibited in New York and Washington; contributed works to exhibitions organised by, amongst others, the “Kölner Sonderbund”, the “Berliner Sezession”, the “Vienna Künstlerhaus” and, in 1933, the Heinemann Gallery in Munich; after 1945, suffered reprisals for refusing to conform to “Socialist Realism”, 1956: Rehabilitation and, in 1958, a retrospective at the Ernst Museum in Budapest, as well as being honoured as a “Distinguished Artist of the Hungarian People’s Republic”; worked in Budapest. Source: Thieme-Becker, Vollmer, Saur “Bio-Bibliographical Encyclopaedia of Artists” and the internet.