Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka

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Csontváry Kosztka Tivadar [ˈʧontvaːri ˈkostkɒ ˈtivɒdɒr] (1853-1919) was a Hungarian painter. He was one of the first Hungarian painters to become well-known in Europe.

His statue in front of the Csontváry Museum, Pécs

Csontváry Museum, Pécs

Csontváry was born 5 July 1853 in Kisszeben (today Sabinov, Slovakia) and died 20 June 1919 in Budapest. He was a pharmacist until his twenties. On a hot sunny afternoon, 13 October 1880, — when he was 27 years old — he experienced a mystic vision. He heard a voice saying "you will be the greatest sunway painter, greater than Raphael!" He took journeys around Europe, visited the galleries of the Vatican, then went home to collect money for his journeys working as an apothecary. From 1890 onwards he traveled around the world. He visited Paris, the Mediterraneum (Dalmatia, Italy, Greece), North Africa and the Middle East (Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Syria) and painted pictures.

He painted his major works between 1903 and 1909. He had some exhibitions in Paris (1907) and Western Europe. Most of the critics in Western Europe recognized his abilities, art and congeniality, but in Hungary during his life he was considered to be an eccentric crank for several reasons, e. g. for his vegetarianism, anti-alcoholism, anti-nicotinism, pacifism, his latent, but more and more apparent schizophrenia and his cloudy, prophetic writings and pamphlets about his life (Curriculum), genius (The Authority, The Genius) and religious philosophy (The Positivum). Even though later he was acclaimed, during his lifetime Csontváry's visionary, expressionistic style found little understanding. A loner by nature, the master's mental balance was upset by his “failure” impairing his creative power. Little did he know that some years after his death, an entire museum in Pécs, Hungary, would be devoted to his paintings, and that worldwide appreciation of his works would be in constant ascendancy. Many painters, e.g. Picasso added a stone to Csontváry's cairn.

He painted more than one hundred pictures, the most famous and emblematic of which is probably Magányos cédrus (The Lonely Cedar). His art connects with post-impressionism and expressionism, but actually he was an autodidact and cannot be classified into an exact style — he regarded himself as one of the "sunway"-painters (this word was created by him). He was one of the most eccentric and most considerable Hungarian painters.

[edit] A quote

"I, Tivadar Kosztka , who gave up his prime of youth for the rebirth of the world, accepting the call of the invisible Spirit, had a regular civil job, comfort, wealth then (...) Going to Paris in 1907 I oppositely standed alone in front of millions with only the result of the divine providence, and I beat the vanity of the world hollow, but I haven't killed 10 million people, only sobered them, I haven't made commercials from things, because I didn't care for the pedlar's press; I retired from the world instead, going to the top of the Lebanons, and I painted cedars."

T., Cs. K.: The Positivum.