Ernyei Sándor

Ernyei was an important artist of the golden age of poster art in the 1960’s and 1970’s. 

He was a student of the University of Applied Art from 1946 to 1947, before going to the University of Fine Arts (1948-1951) where he took courses from Konecsni, alongside with fellow students, Máté, Darvas, Görög and many other young artists.

Between 1963 and 1983, Ernyei was member of the Papp-group and took part in their exhibitions. He was also one of the head organisers of the National Applied Graphics Biennale in Békéscsaba. He regularly published articles about applied graphics.

Between 1960 and 1988, Ernyei was an instructor at the University of Applied Arts.

In addition to posters, he also worked on graphic designs for exhibitions and fairs, such as Hungexpo. Ernyei was also a renowned designer of emblems and logos. For example, he worked for Ibusz (Hungarian Tourism Company) and for several foreign trade companies.

He primarily designed movie posters. His style was based on the frequent use of traditional techniques, drawing and painting. At the beginning of the 1950’s, he was designing movie posters for MOKÉP (Hungarian film distributor), since this was a relatively free area artistically in the time. After 1957, as political repression began to decrease, posters became more colorful and picturesque. During this period, Ernyei was making painted and hand drawn designs. He made some brilliant posters for Vittorio de Sica’s movie Bread, Love and Dreams and Fellini’s Juliet of the Spirits by combining brush painting with photos, attractive letters, contrasted pictures, raster dots, and transparent color fields. Among his best works, we find his movie posters for Az ideális nő, A nagy Red, Az ifjú Werther szenvedései. In the 1960’s, he was influenced by the traditions of graphic art, and he mades some etching-like designs. In addition to this traditional trend, ha was equally open to tasism, op art, abstract paintings, and other current leanings of contemporary painting. At the beginning of the 1970s, pop art also had an impact on Ernyei’s work.                                                                                                             .