GEORGES CSATO 1910/1983

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Csató is the epitome of the avant-garde spirit of the post-war years, and has had a remarkable life. He had the good fortune to meet some of the great cultural figures of the 20th century at an early age. He grew up in Budapest and studied at the Vienna School of Fine Arts in 1929, then in Berlin with Archipenko, Kollwitz, Feininger and Klee. With the rise of the Nazi party, Csató left Germany for Prague with several like-minded avant-garde artists, fleeing the prevailing cultural tyranny in Germany, notably Oska Kokoschka, with whom he worked from 1936 to 1938. With the advance of the Nazis, he returned to Budapest, where he soon found himself in a labor camp. He survived a series of extraordinary ordeals, including escaping, fighting with partisans, being captured by the Russians, taken to an isolated location and forced to paint a portrait of Stalin. "While I was drawing him, he never uttered a single word; he just sat there chain-smoking. The only movement he made was to push me a bottle of vodka and a pack of cigarettes over the table.

When the war was finally over, Csató returned to Budapest and took up his brush again, but Hungary fell under the Stalinist government and abstract painting was strictly forbidden, so he left and arrived in Paris as a refugee, where he lived for the rest of his life. .

Csató's bold, provocative work was well received in Paris, and in 1948 Jean Cocteau organized an exhibition for him at the Librairie Paul Morihien. He quickly established himself among the Parisian avant-garde, taking part in the most radical salons such as Salon des Réalités Nouvelles and Salon Comparaisons, and held a number of notable exhibitions, including Galerie Silvagni, 1951; Galerie de Berri, 1954; Galerie Fürstenberg, 1956; Galerie Mariac, 1959; Galerie di Meo, 1962. In the 1970s, he gained international recognition with successful exhibitions in London, New York, Sydney, Melbourne, Amsterdam, Bonn and Canada.
The artist's work is now represented in several major public collections, including the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Bibliothèque Nationale; Marseille; Museum of Modern Art, Bogota, Colombia; Mendel Art Gallery, Canada.

"Csato's paintings are among the highlights of modern abstraction."
JD Rey, "Connaissance des Arts", 1976

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