Artist of the Month: Mihaly Zichy

Never heard of him right?

Mihaly Zichy is that rare thing, an Hungarian Romantic. Naturally such a creature has not made much of an impact in the great placid lake of western Euroecentric art, but an impact was made. He gained the attention of the Russian Tzar who made him court artist for example. Fortunately for Zichy, he was not around when the revolution came and he had all the freedom and luxury of life in 1870's Europe, settling in Paris and churning out daring art that 'scandalized the authorities'. How easy that must have been for an artist who is mostly remembered today for his erotic sketches.

Its these sketches, which alas due to the terms of my blog I am not allowed to show, first brought Zichy to my attention. Naturally, I have a collection of old fashioned pornography (and when I mean old I mean 1800's old) , that which we now term 'erotica' so as not to tar it with the same brush as modern photographic pornography. I say naturally because I am a good natured pervert, and I appreciate both sexual images of human beings and a good firm line. By this latter I am refering to the quality of the artists hand. That which my tutors in Liverpool refered to as 'draughtmanship'.
His composition is fairly decent and his use of light (see below) is impressive considering the monochrome quality of the medium employed. He was also as you can see very 'daring' for his time.


Like so many other Eastern European artists of his generation and immedietely there after (I am specifically thinking of Alphonse Mucha) his genius went unremarked during his time in Paris most probably because there was just so much competetion and in that time notions of what art was were in constant flux (the bullshit meter was all over the scale). The romantics soon found themselves pushed aside by the photographers to the left and the abstract drama queens to the right. Whilst Alphonse Mucha eventually returned home to work on his 'Slav Epic', Zichy returned east to become a commercial illustrator, apparently doing a lot of biblical work. He died in relative obscurity in 1906, at about the time Mucha was in the USA vainly attempting to break into the big time.