Ervin Bossányi

Ervin Bossányi (born 3 March 1891 in southern Hungary, died 11 July 1975 in Eastcote in Greater London in England) was a Hungarian artist, who worked mainly in northern Germany until his emigration in 1934. He then started a new career as a notable stained glass artist in England.

[edit] Biography

Bossányi was born in a small village in southern Hungary and educated in Budapest. In World War I he was interned for five years in France. After the war he became a notable painter and sculptor in Lübeck and (1929) in Hamburg. A major work from this period is his fountain in Bad Segeberg. 1934 he left Nazi-Germany for England. Here he specialized with remarkable success in stained glass. He made stained glass windows for the University of London (Goldsmith' Library in the Senate House Library), Tate Gallery ("The Angel Blesses the Women Washing the Clothes"), the Victoria and Albert Museum ("Noli me tangere"), as well as cathedral glass for the York Minster, the memorial chapel for President Woodrow Wilson in Washington National Cathedral in Washington D.C. and Canterbury Cathedral. He also created the windows in the chapel at Michaelhouse in South Africa.

The Stained Glass Museum at Ely Cathedral owns two windows Bossanyi made in his last year in Hamburg and which he took with him into emigration.
Behnhaus, Lübeck - paintings

Dagmar Hayes: Ervin Bossanyi, the splendour of stained glass. Canterbury: Friends of Canterbury Cathedral, 1965.
Abram Enns: Lübecker Jahre eines Malers 1919-1929 - Erwin Bossanyi zum 80. Geburtstag in: Der Wagen 1972 S.138 ff mit umfangreichen Abbildungen
Abram Enns: Kunst und Bürgertum, S. 199 ff, Lübeck 1978, ISBN 3-7672-0571-8
Geoffrey Fouquet: Ervin Bossanyi. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum in association with the Bossanyi Trustees, 1979.
Bossányi Ervin 1891 - 1975 emlékkiállítása. Magyar Nemzeti Galéria 1980 április - május. Türr István Múzeum, Baja 1980 június - augusztus / [a kiállítást rendezte ... Szinyei Merse Anna]. Budapest: Magyar Nemzeti Galéria (National Gallery), 1980.
Friedrich Gleiss: Jüdisches Leben in Segeberg vom 18.-20. Jahrhundert, S. 116-126, Norderstedt 2002, ISBN 3-8311-3215-1
Heiner Stiebeling: Unbekannter Bossanyi: 14 Aquarelle zu Paul Claudels Verkündigung, in: Der Wagen 1984, S. 81-98 mit Abb.
Jo Bossanyi: Leben und Arbeit des Künstlers Ervin Bossanyi von 1920 bis 1934 in Norddeutschland. Lübeck: Bibliothek der Hansestadt Lübeck 1999 (Veröffentlichungen der Stadtbibliothek Lübeck: Reihe 3; Bd. 5)
Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon Vol. XIII, 1996, Seite 198