Lot 55 email save

Lajos Szentivanyi oil painting floral Hungarian

20 X 25 inches unframed. It is in need of restoration with some paint loss. Lajos Szentivanyi (1909 - 1973) born in Hungary in 1909 and lived in Budapest until his death in 1973. During his childhood, one of his legs was paralyzed due to infantile paralysis. He taught at Koffán's Open School. Immedi-ately after the German invasion, he orga-nized the resistance group together with Koffán. He lived two buildings away from Koffán's apartment, at Déak tér 3, and he also hid many Jews, communists, and de-serters in his studio. A popular anecdote about Lajos Szentiványi states there were so many hidden Jews and deserters in his apartment that at times one could hardly enter after opening the door. He was a great role model for his students. One of his students described his character per-fectly: "When he couldn't say anything positive about a person, he preferred not to say anything at all."Szentiványi's father was Vice President of the Agrarian Workers and Civic Party (Kisgazda Párt), which was hostile to the Germans. After the Wehrmacht entered Budapest on 20th of March 1944, the Ger-mans arrested Szentiványi's father and deported him to a concentration camp. He was among the first twenty Hungarian ci-tizens arrested by the Germans on the first day of their invasion. His son maintained contact with his political acquaintances. Szentiványi's father survived his impri-sonment in the concentration camp. François Gachot, a French cultural at-taché, writer, art collector, and political historian, lived in the same house as Lajos Szentiványi. He was also a friend of Koffán's and a member of Charles de Gaulle's intelligence group in Buda-pest. In 1940, Gachot wrote a preface for one Koffán's art books and in 1944, he organized an art exhibition for Lajos Szentiványi.

unframed. Needs some restoration and cleaning

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