Sándor (Alexander) Bortnyik
Komposition
1922
Watercolour on watercolour laid paper 36.2 x 25.3 cm Framed under glass. Signed and dated 'Weimar 1922' in pencil lower left and with dedication to Alfred Forbát 1923 lower right. - Minimal foxing in the margins. Partially slightly faded.
The Hungarian painter, draftsman and graphic artist Sándor Bortnyik began his artistic career as an advertising designer in Budapest. In 1918 he began working for the avant-garde journal “MA”, edited by Lajos Kassàk; in 1920 Bortnyik had to emigrate to Vienna. From there he went to Weimar in 1922 and developed close connections with the artists at the Bauhaus. That same year, he was able to participate in an exhibition at the Berlin gallery Der Sturm for the first time. At the beginning of the 1920s his early experiments with Cubist, Expressionist and Futurist stylistic devices were replaced by an abstract and Constructivist manner of painting featuring architectonic elements. The present sheet is dedicated to the German-Hungarian architect Alfred Forbát (1897-1972), who created a double portrait of Bortnyik and his wife in 1924.
Provenance
Hauswedell & Nolte, Hamburg 1986, auction 263, lot 120; Private collection, North Rhine-Westphalia
Exhibitions
Düsseldorf/Halle 1992 (Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen/Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg), Konstruktivistische Internationale, Schöpferische Arbeitsgemeinschaft. 1922-27. Utopien für eine europäische Kultur, cat. no. 6 with colour illus.; Würzburg 1995 (Städtische Galerie), FormSchichten. FarbStrahlen. Aspekte russischer und osteuropäischer Kunst 1910-1930, p. 82 with colour illus. 16