Francis De Erdely

Francis De Erdely was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1901. De Erdely’s traditional academic training was conducted at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, at the Real Academie de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, and at the Sorbonne and Ecole du Louvre in Paris. Trained in Europe, De Erdely’s technique, draftsmanship, and compositions were steeped in classicism. But his exposure to the devastation of both World Wars strongly informed the content of his work. As his career developed, he became less interested in history painting and the themes of classical Antiquity. He became increasingly more interested in depictions of the human condition and themes of memory, loss, and struggle began to permeate his work.

He immigrated to the United States in 1939. It was after his move to the City of Los Angeles where his most mature work developed and where he found his inspiration, identity, and impact as an American artist. He is best known for his figure-based paintings done in Los Angeles during the 1940's and 1950's of immigrants, and other ethnic or social outsiders. It can be argued that the subjects of these paintings relate directly to De Erdely’s own experience as an immigrant in a new country.

As part of Laguna Art Museum's recent exhibition "Striking Figures: Francis DeErdely", guest curator Alissa Anderson Campbell recently gave a lecture on why the artist consistently painted figurative works and portraits even during a period of post-war American art that began to favor abstract expressionism and non-representational painting. Alissa Anderson Campbell is the leading expert on Francis DeErdely, writing the first major biography of the artist's work. DeErdely was the subject of Campbell's MA thesis in which she conducted all primary research at the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art -- where Francis DeErdely's papers now reside. 

A classical trained European artist, DeErdely moved to California and did not fall into one distinctive group of artists but explored social realism, expressionism, and cubism all in the same extraordinary painting. His portraits of people, often the ones who aren’t typically depicted, are eloquent painterly meditations on the human experience. Whether  relating to war, immigration, labor, or class, the purpose behind De Erdely’s art was to capture the universal struggles of the human condition.

The artist's social commentaries were done in a subtle yet critical manner and although his paintings were sympathetic to outsiders and immigrants, they were never overtly political: 

One reviewer of De Erdely’s 1953 exhibition at San Francisco's de Young Museum said "His works are not only magnificent in their technique but also in the tragic, lyric and epic insights which they provide.

It was through his superior artistic insight that he was able to successfully explore such themes in a manner that stood out from the artists around him. The artist’s own experience with war, personal identification as an outsider and his artistic ingenuity allowed his timeless narratives to resonate beyond his own lifetime.

De Erdely consistently painted the people of California as a means of discussing race and immigration, topics still relevant today.

His paintings and drawings of everyday people in and around Los Angeles are particularly poignant.

De Erdely’s decision to move to California was well suited to the artist’s radical political views and interest in social issues and It was here that his own position as an outsider would instigate his most insightful period of work. De Erdely worked as a professor of art at USC. Later, his influence expanded even further as he became dean of the Pasadena Art Institute School from 1944 to 1946.

De Erdely is an artist whose career was prolific during his lifetime and exceptional work was known by California art historians and collectors of the time— but who was largely forgotten after his death in 1959. He had no children and his artworks were not kept within an estate -- and instead scattered to various collectors and friends mostly throughout California.

When discussing art, DeErdely said, "I have reached the conclusion that art which is purely fashionable is also short-lived, that only that art has survived the passage of time which has mirrored the cosmic problems of its era, and that art is an organic part of life and not a thing apart from it." He goes on to say, "Thus in my work I seek to document the times in which I live and to indicate the shape of things to come . . . and to awaken [my students] to complete awareness of those stirring social forces which created and will continue to mold the monumental history of America." He was a poet in his lyrical way of painting the figure. Most anyone in mid-century art world new of the artist Francis De Erdely.

For as prominent an artist as DeErdely was in the canon of California modern art, Campbell's new book "Striking Figures: Francis DeErdely" is the first major publication about the renowned artist. Alissa Anderson Campbell is the leading expert on De Erdely's work and recently gave a lecture at the Laguna Art Museum on his portraits and figurative paintings and drawings that revolutionized the Southern California art scene.

Francis De Erdely's work is held in the permanent collections of these museums:

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA

Huntington Art Museum, San Marino, CA 

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL

Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown , OH  

Colorado Springs Fine Arts, Colorado Springs, CO

Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.  

Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO

Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI

Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University, UT

Oakland Museum of Art, Oakland, CA

Pasadena Art Institute, Pasadena, CA

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, PA

Seattle Museum of Art, Seattle, WA 

Springville Museum of Art, Springville, UT

USC Fisher Gallery, University of California, CA

After Francis DeErdely's death in 1959 the majority of his papers were donated to the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art. 

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