Vilmos Huszár

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Packaging design, 1926, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York.

Mechano-Dancer, 1922, Private collection, New York.

Vilmos Huszár (1884, Budapest, Hungary - 1960, Hierden, The Netherlands) was a Hungarian painter and designer, most famously known for being one of the founder members of the Dutch art movement De Stijl.

He emigrated to The Netherlands in 1905, settling at first in Voorburg, and was influenced by Cubism and Futurism. He met other influential artists such as Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg, both central figures in establishing the De Stijl movement with Huszár in 1917. He also co-founded the De Stijl magazine and designed the cover for the first issue.

In 1918 he designed interior colour schemes for the bedroom of Bruynzeel house in Voorburg. From 1920 to 1921 he collaborated with Piet Zwart on furniture designs. He left the De Stijl group in 1923 and collaborated with Gerrit Rietveld on an exhibition interior for the Greater Berlin Art Exhibition. From 1925, Huszár concentrated on graphic design and painting.

In 1926 he created a complete visual identity for Miss Blanche Virginia cigarettes, which included packaging, advertising, and point-of-sale displays. The concept drew on the imagery associated with the "New Women", or Flappers, that were emerging in the 1920s. The Flappers were perceived as young, single, urban, and employed, with independent ideas and a certain disdain for authority and social norms. The smoking of cigarettes was closely associated with this newly found independence.

The whereabouts of many of Huszár's works are, unfortunately, unknown. Many of his paintings and sculptures are only known through photographs that appeared in De Stijl, or from photographs the artist took himself. Works that are lost include the Dancing mechanical doll, a device that could adopt several different postures and was used during Dada conferences in the early 1920s.

Huszár died in Hierden, in 1960. From March 8 to May 19, 1985 a large Huszár retrospective was held at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague.