Ferenc  Redő painter (1913-2012)

 

Ferenc Redő was born in Budapest in August 1913. His masters were Vilmos Aba-Novák, Róbert Berény and Béla Iványi Grünwald. His works, drawings at first and paintings later on, are displayed in exhibitions starting from 1934. He receives two prizes at the Spring Art Salon organized by the Pál Szinyei Merse Society, and his linocuts are displayed in the Enst Museum.

In 1936, he marries his fellow artist, Rozália Vörös. Their first child, Katalin, is born in 1940.

During the Second World War he is called to military service four times but given unarmed duties due to his Jewish heritage. His longest service is spent on the Russian front between spring of 1942 and autumn of 1943. His life was spared thanks to his luck, his perseverance and the help of his comrades as well as the women in Ukrainian villages who didn’t let him freeze and starve to death during the retreat of winter 1942. He spent his last years of service in the work camp in Bor, Serbia, from which he escaped with the help of Serbian partisans. On the road between Kesckemét and Budapest he travelled with the Red Army, to whom he provided assistance as an interpreter until February 1945. Their second child, Ferenc, is born after the war.

In the first years after the war, he occupies different positions in the visual arts world, first as the head of the Visual Arts section of the Ministry of Popular Culture, and later as the rector of the Museum of Fine Arts.

From 1954 he is a teacher at the University of Applied Arts, and finally, a lecturer at the Applied Arts . Starting from 1960, he is once again, an independent artist.

While he does drawings at first, his interests later turned to textile works. A large batik picture of his is presented at the István Csók gallery in 1957. 1960 he participates in a national tapestry competition with his wife, which they win. Starting from this moment, his main work is constituted of tapestries. At first working together with Rozáliá Vörös, including on smaller, simpler tapestries, they decide to create tapestry designs separately later on.

He made 2-4 tapestries a year throughout this part of his career. In the course of his work, he designed 17 tapestries which were commissioned, and more than a hundred on his own initiative, which uncommon in such an expensive genre.

Intensive design work brought with it the need to have permanent weavers to execute the designs. Rozália Vörös gave several courses, during which she trained those interested in this trade. In order to master their craft, they studied antique Coptic, classical Flemish and French tapestry art. Ferenc Redő was responsible for making the technical drawings of the objects and dyeing the wool yarns. For decades, their students implemented their designs to a high technical and artistic standard and formed an “invisible workshop” around the creative activity of the artist couple.

His wife and co-creator died in 1992. He had to live without her for his last two decades. The memories of his long life and his creative imagination helped him through this final, lonely phase of his life. This was also a fertile period in his career, with several works important to his overall oeuvre as a whole were completed during this time. It is also during this period that he released an album of his tapestries containing reproductions of 47 of his works and completed his richly illustrated autobiography dealing with the events of the first, complicated 50 years.

He died in October 2012, at the age of 99. His audience appreciated him. He received the SZOT Award in 1972, as well as the titles of Outstanding Artist and Worthy Artist, in 1976 and 1986 respectively, and was elected an honorary citizen of his district, Budapest XIII., in 2005.

Main exhibitions: 1963 Ernst Museum, 1968 Ernst Museum, 1974 Hungarian National Gallery, 1978 Dubna (Soviet Union), 1980 Hungarian National Gallery, 1980 Paris, 1982 Helsinki, 1983 Vigadó Gallery, 1988 István Csók Gallery, 1993 Zalaegerszeg (retrospective), 1994 Újlipótváros Club Gallery, 1998 Újlipótváros Club Gallery, 1999 János Tornyai Museum, 2003 Ernst Museum.

His works enrich the collections of the Hungarian National Gallery, the Museum of Applied Arts, the Hungarian National Museum, the János Tornyai Museum in Hódmezővásárhely, the Rippl-Rónai Museum in Kaposvár, and the Ottó Herman Museum in Miskolc. They also decorate the halls of the Budapest Opera, the Paks Nuclear Power Plant, the Hódmezővásárhely Municipality, the Hungarian Army Medical Center and the homes of private individuals.