Béla Uitz (1887-1972) - Árkadiá

In the auction there is a very rare original print by the important Hungarian artist Béla Uitz from 1916.

The image shows a figural composition with the motif "Bathers." The title "Árkadiá" refers to the notion since the Early Modern period drawn from the Greek myth of Arcadia, that life beyond societal constraints is possible.

Label
Below the depiction, signed in pencil and dated "Bela Uitz 1916".

Dimensions
The sheet measures approximately 41.0 x 53.0 cm, the image about 23.5 x 34.5 cm.

Condition
Strong impression on handmade paper with natural rag edges. The paper is age-browned and soiled. Edges and corners partially bumped and creased. At the lower edge there is a crease with a split. The depiction is in good condition.

Provenance
The sheet comes from a private collection in Berlin, purchased at Galerie Irrgang Berlin.

Béla Uitz (born March 8, 1887 in Mehala, Austria-Hungary; died January 26, 1972 in Budapest) was a Hungarian painter.

Béla Uitz initially trained as a locksmith. From 1908 to 1912 he studied at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest[1] and had his first exhibition participation in Budapest in 1914. Together with works by the group Nyolcak (The Eight), works of his were shipped to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, for which he received a gold medal in 1915.[2]

In 1915, together with his brother-in-law Lajos Kassák and Emil Szittya, he published the Hungarian avant-garde magazine A Tett (The Deed), which was banned by wartime censorship in 1917. Afterward he served as co-editor in Kassák's magazine MA (Today) and participated in its third group exhibition in 1918. In 1917 he held an exhibition with Péter Dobrovics, Lajos Gulácsy, János Kmetty and József Nemes Lampérth under the title A Fiatalok (The Young).

After the war ended in 1918, he was one of the leading visual artists of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, a member of its Art Directorate and head of the workshops for Proletarian Visual Arts, where propaganda posters were produced (Vörös Katonák Előre!). After the suppression of the Soviet Republic he was imprisoned for a time. After the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic in 1919, Uitz went into exile in Vienna with the Hungarian activist group, where he joined Kassák’s circle and encountered new trends in international avant-garde art. In spring 1921 he traveled to Moscow, where he was fascinated by both contemporary Russian constructivist art and the Orthodox churches, especially icon painting. Upon his return to Vienna he broke with Lajos Kassák and, together with Aladár Komját, founded the magazine Egység (Unity). Translation of Naum Gabo’s Realist Manifesto, the program of the Constructivist group of Rodchenko and Stepanova, and the ideas of Kasimir Malevich’s Suprematism.

In 1923 he took over Proletkult’s painting style and from 1924 in Paris he engaged with the French Communist Party. In 1926 he moved to the Soviet Union and worked there for more than forty years as an artist of Soviet propaganda art. Shortly before his death he returned to Hungary.