Vaszary János

János Vaszary was an exquisite Hungarian painter and graphic artist, active from the end of 1880s till the end of 1930s.

He first started learning under the great Hungarian painter, Bertalan Székely, afterwards he studied in Munich, then in the Julian Academy of Paris as well.

His art was inspired mostly by the French artistic tendencies of the period, but he was also influenced by the artistic colony of Nagybánya. His ouvre had several periods, in the beginning his art was dominated by Art Nouveau, when his artistic activity in the field of applied arts is the most intensive. This was the time when he created several prominent posters too, most of them promoted artistic exhibitions. Around the turn of the century it was a new phenomenon that posters of exhibitions were made by the exhibiting artists themselves, so these posters reflected their own aspects and artistic approaches, furthermore they were in harmony with the advertised exhibition. During this period his exhibition posters were fine pieces of the poster art of Hungary with their stylized, decorative portrayal and they promoted his own symbolic painting.

Later he created realist and naturalist genre paintings, and in the second part of the 1900s the artistic approach of French Impressionism appeared in his works, but he knew all the most important techniques of all the other current tendencies and also taught them in the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts from the 1920s until 1932. He was founder member of several artistic associations and he had numerous great exhibitions, many in the National Salon.

He was active until his death in 1939.