Desiderius Orban


Desiderius Orban, was a renowned Hungarian painter, printmaker and teacher, who, after emigrating to Australia in 1939 when in his mid-50s, also made an illustrious career in that country.
One of The Eight in Budapest, early 20th-century painters who were influential in introducing cubism, expressionism and Fauvism to Hungary, Orbán had been influenced by the paintings of Henri Matisse, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne, seen when he lived in Paris. After building a substantial career, in 1939 after the rise of Nazi Germany and the invasion of Poland, he left Hungary and emigrated to Sydney. He painted and taught for nearly another fifty years, influencing generations of students.

Biography

Born Orbán Dezső to Jewish-Hungarian parents in Győr, Hungary, in 1884, he moved as a child with his family to Budapest in 1888. There he later studied art with János Pentelei Molnár. He studied philosophy, physics and mathematics at the University of Budapest. In 1905, he performed the compulsory military service with the Austro-Hungarian army.
In 1906, Orbán moved to Paris, where he studied briefly at the Académie Julian, but gave up academic training to study alone. Numerous artists from Hungary were flocking to Paris at the time.
After his return to Budapest, in 1909 Orbán joined with several other young artists known as "neos", or Keresők. They were taking a different direction from the older artists of the Nagybánya school, whose painters had worked at what is now Baia Mare, Romania and first brought impressionist and post-impressionist techniques to Hungary.
At their second exhibit in 1911, the group took the name The Eight ; they brought contemporary painting techniques and expression from western Europe to Hungary. Other members of the group were Károly Kernstok, Béla Czóbel, Róbert Berény, Dezső Czigány, Ödön Márffy, Bertalan Pór, and Lajos Tihanyi.
In these early years, Orban came into contact with Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani and Georges Braque.
In 1912-13 he was called up again for military service in the Balkan Wars.

Marriage and family

In 1915, Orbán married Alice Vajda, a doctor serving in the army.

1930s and after

Through the 1920s, Orbán continued to work at art. In 1931, he founded the Arts and Crafts Academy, Atelier, in Budapest. In 1937, his painting Cathedral in Eger was seized by the Nazis from the Nuremberg Museum collection as they objected to modern art; it was never recovered.
With the rise of the Nazis, anti-Semitism and Fascism, in 1939 Orbán fled Budapest around the time of the German invasion of Poland and beginning of World War II. At the age of nearly 55, he emigrated first to London.

Emigration to Australia

Orbán went on to Sydney, Australia, where he settled. He changed his first name to Desiderius. In 1942 during the war, he enlisted in the Australian Army as a private. He began his own art school. For a time, to earn a living, he worked as a spray painter in a Sydney factory. In 1944, one of his paintings was purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
From 1946 to 1949, Desiderius Orbán was President of the NSW branch of the Contemporary Art Society of Australia. In 1953, he was elected Chairman of the UNESCO National Committee of Visual Arts. From 1957 to 1967, he conducted summer schools in painting at the University of New England, Armidale.
He was a judge for the 1960 Sulman Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 1967, and again in 1971, he won the Blake Prize for Religious Art.
His students in Australia included Harold Thornton, Yvonne Audette, Margo Lewers, John Olsen, Pat Kelk Graham, Ruth Faerber, Panni Roseth, Olive Hughes, John Coburn, Ruth Burgess, Virginia Cuppaidge, James Clifford, Aileen Rogers, Sheila McDonald, Hilary Cassidy, Mary Curtis and Tom Green.
Orban died in Sydney in 1986, aged 101.
A collection of Desiderius Orban-related research material is housed at Lane Cove Library in Sydney.

Legacy

In the 21st century European museums have held major exhibits on the Hungarian modernists and marked the centenary of the first exhibit of The Eight.