Imre Varga

The native form of this personal name is Varga Imre. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.

2004

Franz Liszt

Imre Varga (born 1 November 1923, Siófok) is a Hungarian sculptor, painter, designer and graphic artist. He is regarded as one of Hungary's most important living artists.

Biography

Even as a schoolboy, Vargas drawings were exhibited in small exhibitions. He studied aeronautics at the Military Academy in Budapest and graduated with a diploma and during World War II, he served as an officer in the Hungarian Air Force before being taken as a prisoner of war by the United States, returning to his country in 1945, where he turned to the visual arts. From 1950 to 1956, he studied at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest under Sándor Mikus and Pál Pátzay, graduating with a degree. Since then, Varga has worked in many different artistic fields. He has made small statues and coins, as well as monumental works for public spaces.

He attended the first "Hungarian Fine Arts Exhibition", where his work "Iron Workers was exhibited. His first high profile work, "Prometheus", was created in 1965. In the 1970s, he broke away from the conventional monumentalism usually seen in Communist countries. He created a wide array of works - ranging from statues of Vladimir Lenin to the Holocaust, to statues of Francis II Rákóczi, Raoul Wallenberg, Sir Winston Churchill and Béla Bartók to Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle. About 300 of his works are now exhibited in nine countries.

Additional reading

• Márta Harangozó, Imre Varga, Bálint Ördögh, Judit Ruska (2003), The world of Imre Varga, Kossuth, ISBN 9789630945066{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link).