Pán József

Jozsef Pan was a Hungarian set designer, director, and graphic artist. Born in Budapest in 1901 to David Rosenwald, a state railway engineer and Magdolna Spitzer.

He graduated from the College of Applied Arts in Berlin. Following his brother, he also began to work as a painter, then designed sets for the Belvarosi Szinhaz (Downtown Theatre) and, from 1917, the Uher film studio. In the mid-twenties, he was contracted to Vienna, where he worked at the Josephstadter Theater and the Deutsches Volkstheater, as well as the Vita film studio.

Pan often designed movie and commercial posters; his drawing style and artistic approach fitted to the shrill visual world of the silent films. He was also working during the 1920s and 1930s, when his style changed from the narrative Art Nouveau to a more expressionistic Art Deco.    

Initially he designed caricature-like, and sometimes even grotesque posters for musical shows: these works often show the caricaturistic interpretations of characters of the everyday life, who are desperate to go the club. His designs are extremely colorful, decorative and dynamic. They are always narrative, using recognizable characters, and they radiate a cheerful atmosphere. This cheerful attitude is present on his posters for Telikert (Winter Garden bar).

He returned to Hungary in 1928 and from 1934 he was the set designer of the Hungarian Film Office. From 1939 to 1945 he was unable to work, partly because of the Jewish law, partly because the work of a set designer was tied to an architectural degree. Despite this, several cafes and nightclubs in Budapest were decorated based on his designs. From 1945 he was the set designer of the Hunnia Film Factory and from 1949 of the Hungarian Film Production Company. Between 1949 and 1954 he taught at the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts.

On 25 September 1927 he married Leopoldine Jozefa Peterlik, born in Vienna. From 1949 he was married to Klára Krausz. He was baptized on November 29, 1938, and officially converted to Hungarian in 1946. He had already worked on silent films. As a designer at the MFI, he designed the sets for many successful films made there. When he was banned, he even trained his successor, József Simoncsics. After 1945, he was a leading set designer and a collaborator on representative Hungarian films.                                                                                        .