József Egry

(15th March 1883, Újlak -19th June 1951, Badacsonytomaj)painter

He started his art studies in Budapest and then continued in Munich. He studied the endeavours of the modern painters in Paris in 1905. He returned home and became a student of the famous painters of the Hungarian Academy of Fine Art (Képzőművészeti Főiskola) between 1906 and 1908. In 1912 his patrons sponsored a study tour to Belgium. After World War I he settled in Badacsony, and painted the Lake Balaton in several places and themes. From the 1920's the lake became his exclusive theme.

To Egry the Balaton was not simply a landscape. "It means everything to me, it makes my life whole" he confessed. The critics described him as the 'painter of light' or a 'painter obsessed with light'. At first he used the language of Expressionism on the canvas, but he soon developed his own style. His oil pastel pictures unite man and nature in a suggestive vision. He won the Ernst Prize in 1924, and the Szinye Landscape Prize in 1926, and in 1948 he was amongst the first to win the Kossuth Prize. His former studio in Badacsonytomaj is today a museum dedicated to him.