Maria Szantho (1897-1998

Maria Szantho
Maria Szantho (1897-1998) born in Szeged, Hungary in 1897 and died in Nagymagocs, Hungary in 1998. Szantho was a painter and a talented pianist, born of Hungarian nobility. She graduated as a Diplomate in musical studies from the Hungarian Music Academy. Shortly thereafter, she decided to pursue interests in painting and studied with Masters Geza Kukan, Bertalan Karlovszky, Pal Fried and Matyas Vitez. She also studied in France and Italy. An idyllic environment with a musical atmosphere and colorful musicians formed a recurrent theme in her
subject matter. Her naturalistic paintings are rich and colorful and often include the female form in nudes, character portraits and still-lifes, greatly inspired by the hedonism of Karoly Lotz. She began exhibiting in the mid-1920s at the Art Hall (Mucsarnok) and had solo exhibitions regularly in the United States and Japan. She represented Hungary with three of her paintings at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, and in 1942 was awarded Hungary’s Esterhazy Prize for her sensational erotic work “The Old Stag.