Medve Family

Medve András was born in Szászrégen (Reghin, RO) 1941. He grew up in Nagybánya (Baia-Mare, Ro). During 1963-1968 he attended the Hungarian Art Academy; afterwards he followed the Dresden School of Art, Sculpture department. Since 1971, he lives in Düsseldorf. In 2010, he received the Herczeg Klára Prize. Characteristic on his drawings and art are a direct tone, exuberant storytelling, the raw drawing manner, an apparent clumsiness and naivety. He creates also from found objects, like brow paint, lipstick, rainbow pencil. He finds the expressive power of each object. The traditions of modern and not modern art are simultaneously present in his work. His sculptures are monumental: helmet, shoes, airplane, where also the pedestal is part of the object, a tree stump, stone cross and an iron piece. His preferred materials are gold, wood, lead, plaster, concrete and cardboard. He is interested in the contrast between the cheap, waste materials and the expensive, noble materials like ceramics covered with gold against lead.

His wife, Baksa-Soós Krisztina was born in Budapest in 1944. During 1962-1968 she attended the Hungarian School of Art; afterwards she finished the Dresden School of Art, Sculpture department. During 1972-77 she was student at Fachhochschule für Kunst in Cologne. In 1970 she received the Derkovits scholarship and in 1971 the Derkovits Prize. Since 1971 she lives in Düsseldorf together with her husband, the sculptor Medve András. Since 1990 she lives most of the year in Nemesvita. She is member of Künstlerverband artists’ association. From the very beginning she makes figural sculpture, according to her own words ’she is interested only in people’, ’each sculpture of her is a portrait’. She modeled Sphinx as well as Boxers. She works with the most different materials, from wood through bronze until the terracotta. Characteristics are the colored portraits in terracotta. The Hungarian National Gallery preserves the Young female nude. Her last work is a monument of Endre Nagy, the founder of the Africa-collection, in Balatonederics.

His brother-in-law, Baksa-Soós János was born in 1948 in Budapest. In 1968 he was founding member of Vastaps, and later member of the legendary Kex-band, founded in 1969. He defected to West Germany in 1971 where he attended the Folkwang School of Art in Essen, graphic department. Afterward he became a student at the Kunstakademie of Düsseldorf, where he studied painting, graphic art, sculpture and ceramics. His masters were: Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter and Rolf Sackenheim. Since 1978 he lives in Berlin where he has published under the name Prince January. In his works he has created a specific private mythology. His installations made by paintings, jewelry, small sculptures draw up a common set the stage for universal-cosmic world view, the watercolors next to them in the form of a huge mosaic, as a mechanical world picture.

The uncle of his wife, Baksa-Soós György (Budapest, 1908 – 1978) He started his carrier at the Podolini-Volmann Free School. During the 30s he was in contact with the Group of Socialist Artists. He debuted in 1933 with sculptures during the exhibition of the young artist in the Kunsthal. In 1940 he presented his terracotta´s in the Tamás Gallery at the „Hungarian contemporary sculpture” exhibition. After 1945, he had worked as sculpture restaurateur at the Municipal Gallery. Due to the influence of Egyptian art he became interested in stability, in status, but the drama so characteristic to the topic was no stranger to him neither. He had worked often with a specific technique: he hammered the metal sheet on an inner raw seed. His main public monuments are: Ságvári Endre, 1949, Budakeszi street 5.; Petőfi Sándor, 1952 Szt. István ring. 14.; Birds, 1955, Kőrösi Csoma Sándor district; Lying Man Nude 1956 k., Thälmann district; The medical science overcomes illness, 1957, Medicine University Debrecen; Leonardo da Vinci 1958, Pécs; Miner 1965, Halimba.

His mother, Medve Makkai Piroska (Domán, 1910- Budapest, 1998) Painter, graphic artist. She was born in Transylvania, in the Jill valley, a mining area, which had determinated her whole carrier. She graduated the College of Fine Arts in Cluj in 1933, where she was admitted, against admissions policy, based on just one of her drawings. She won a scholarship to spend a semester during 1934-1935 at the Budapest College of Fine Arts, where she learns the technique of woodcutting from its greatest Varga Lajos. In the autumn of 1935 she became art teacher in the Protestant Girls School in Oradea. In 1943 she published her first album, The Woman, in Cluj, a series of 26 woodcuts about the „eternal supporting actor”. In 1944 as a result of escape from the war she settled in Baia-Mare. She painted, made woodcuts, and became a teacher of arts in the town’s high school. In 1949, with her active participation the Art School of Nagybánya was revived. She was given the studio of János Thorma. She had regular exhibitions in Nagybánya, other Transylvanian towns, and national exhibitions in Bucharest. She had received orders from the State. In 1955 she was informed that her husband who was thought to be dead has actually been rehabilitated and brought back to Budapest from the Kolima prisoners’ camp as a Hungarian prisoner of war. In 1956 the artist travelled to Budapest with her children. During the second part of her life she lived, worked and had exhibitions in Budapest.