4590 - Pál Molnár-C., Nude in an Arcadian Landscape

Pál Molnár-C., Nude in an Arcadian Landscape a surreal evening mountain landscape featuring ancient columns and a female nude beside her ghostly, floating wedding dress; melancholic, impasto painting, mixed media on hardboard, c. 1970, monogrammed ‘MCP’ in Hungarian in the lower right-hand corner, illegibly stamped on the reverse, minor signs of age, framed, inner dimensions approx. 39.5 x 62 cm. Artist information: actually Pál Molnár, also known as Pal [Paul] Molnar; from around 1922 onwards, he called himself “Pál Molnár-C.” after his mother’s maiden name, Jeanne Contant , Hungarian painter, fresco artist, book artist, woodcut artist and commercial artist (1894, Battonya - 1981, Budapest), studied art education at the Academy in Budapest; moved to Switzerland 1918-21; spent 1921-22 studying in Paris; worked in Budapest again from 1922; spent 1928-31 in Italy on a Hungarian state scholarship; during this time, he worked intermittently with the art historian Tibor Gerevich at the Accademia d’Ungheria in Rome; returned to Budapest in 1931; received various honours, including the gold medal at the Monza Arts and Crafts Exhibition in 1929, the Padua Painting Prize and the Zichy Prize in 1930, In 1934, he was awarded the Franz Joseph Jubilee Prize and the Warsaw Painting Prize; in 1937, he won the Grand Prix at the World Exhibition in Paris and a gold medal in Milan, as well as a gold medal at the 1938 International Woodcut Exhibition in Warsaw; in 1939, he was awarded the Pro Arte et Ecclesia Cross by Pope Pius XII; source: Thieme-Becker, Vollmer, Saur ‘Bio-Bibliographical Encyclopaedia of Artists’, articles by Orsolya Putz and Anna Koltay on the artist, as well as the internet.