INVITATION

You are invited with respect and love by the Armenian Nationality Municipality of the 15th District of Budapest to the festive presentation of Zoltán Nuridsány painter's art album Saturday, December 11, 2021 at 11 p.m. at the Community Hall of the Armenian Catholic Church Budapest, 11th District, Orlay street 6. The participants are greeted by: Mimi Nuridsány The album is presented by art historian Katalin Benedek. Contributors: actress Mária Várady and flutist Kristóf Fogolyán. The presentation will be closed with a reception. Admission is free of charge. Wearing a face mask is mandatory! The event is organized and supported by the Armenian Nationality Municipality of the 15th District of Budapest.

Biography

Zoltán Nuridsány was born on 22 August 1925, in Marosvásárhely, of Szekler origin on his mother’s side and Armenian on his father’s side.

In Budapest, at the Cistercian St. Imre High School, under the guidance of graphic artist Nándor Nagy, he became a regular member of the Fine Arts Circle. He also regularly draws at Tibor Gallé’s famous Free School, where he deals with the proportions and dynamics of the human body.

This conscious preparation won him admission to the Academy of Fine Arts in 1944. His masters were István Szőnyi, Jenő Barcsay, János Kmetty and Géza Fónyi in the mosaic department.

Durig the spring of 1945 he works in Szentendre in the company of Jenő Barcsay and János Kmetty.

From 1946 he participates in exhibitions at the European School. His critics considered him as a member of the new generation of the European School and as an Academy of Fine Arts student of an earnest and promising talent.

In 1948, he was a scholarship student of the Collegium Hungaricum of Rome. His exhibited works gained great success at the scholarship holder’s exhibition. The colours and forms he used drew the attention of a number of Italian art magazines authors who compared his talent to other great European artists. Under the known political circumstances, Szőnyi helped his talented students with this scholarship to escape to Italy. However, for Zoltán Nuridsány, resettling from Transylvania at the age of 11 was such a traumatic experience that he did not wish to relive.

Back in Hungary, he was greatly concerned with the theoretical and practical problems of mural art upon the initiative of Máriusz Rabinovszky, whose assistant lecturer was Zoltán Nuridsány. In 1949, a monumental mosaic sketch was exhibited at the MEFESZ (Hungarian Association of University and College Students) Exhibition. His talent was praised by Lajos Fülep as well.

In 1949–50, the ’Quadriga’ was founded by Ferenc Jánossy, Zoltán Nuridsány, Gellért Orosz, and Gyula Sugár. Their exhibitions met with warm response in the early fifties, but as János Frank wrote: „The Quadriga started to make progress, but the socialist realism stopped it” (Frank, 1992). In 1955 the Quadriga had five new members: painters László Bod, Lipóth Böhm, László Bornemissza and sculptors Barnabás Megyeri and László Wágner.

In 1955, Nuridsány’s first – and last – monumental work was created the “Engineer” (a mosaic with a couple of figures) on the outside wall of the Engineering School in Székesfehérvár. The next tender arrived two decades later not long before his death. His project was rewarded twice, but the third time his project was not the award-winning one. Moreover, his project has never been implemented.

In the meantime he became famous for his paintings.

In 1962, he had his solo exhibition, which was held in the Fényes Adolf Gallery. The text of the catalogue was written by János Frank.

In 1962, he visited Vietnam due to his wife’s job, where he spent six months. In November, he exhibited his prints and aquarelles mostly made in Vietnam, titled Hanoi–Haiphong–Budapest, which gained great success. On their way back home, they spent a month and a half in China and a month in the Soviet Union. visiting the major cities and historical sites.

In 1966, In Szeged, his works were exhibited alongside the works of Erik Scholz and Gyula Sugár, which was inaugurated by László Bod.

In 1968, a collection of drawings with the title “Vietnam in pictures” was exhibited.

His paintings have been selected in numerous national exhibitions, most notably the annual Art Gallery of the Kunsthalle and the Ernst Museum. In the discussion of ’Life and Literature’ (a weekly Hungarian magazine about literature and politics) about the 1957 Spring Exhibition, György Szabó referred to his work as one of the promising future talents. Each exhibition of his gained great success.

His works now belong to the Hungarian National Gallery, to other museums in the country and also to the collections of Hungarian and foreign art collectors, and in homes.

Apart from his atelier in the Alkotmány Street, he also enjoyed painting at artist’s colonies among many others in Szentendre, Sárospatak, Vörösberény, Nagymaros and Zsennye.

In his last years he even visited Armenia and received his first passport to the West (to the other side of the Iron Curtain), to France. In Paris, among other, he met Tibor Csernus, Simon Hantai, Pál Hargitai and Judit Reigl, who had tried unsuccessfully to send him an official invitation in the previous decades. He was delighted to meet them, but because of his illness he could no longer plan anything, even though Michel Gyarmathy offered him a job as a stage-designer.

On 22 May 1974, in Debrecen, while he was preparing his next exhibition, the sudden death came in the prime of his life.