Ervin Marton (known as Marton Ervin in Hungarian; 17 June 1912 – 30 April 1968) was a Franco-Hungarian artist and photographer who became an integral part of the Paris art culture beginning in 1937. An internationally recognized photographer, he is known for his portraits of many key figures in art, literature and the sciences working in Paris, as well as for his candid "street photography". His work was regularly exhibited in Paris during his lifetime, as well as in Budapest, London and Milan. It is held by the Hungarian National Gallery, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and the Hungarian Museum of Photography, as well as by major corporations and private collectors in Europe and the United States.
Together with numerous other Hungarians and immigrants, Marton joined the French Resistance during the Nazi occupation of Paris in World War II. Artists and intellectuals participated in projects of aiding refugees, printing clandestine communications to keep up morale, and forging passes to aid people trying to escape the Nazis. Afterwards, Marton was awarded the Médaille de la Libération (French Liberation Medal) by the French government.
Renewed interest in the Hungarian artists of 20th-century Paris has generated major 21st-century exhibits of Ervin Marton and his contemporaries. These include exhibits in Vienna, Austria (2004); and Kecskemét (2004) and Budapest, Hungary (2007 and 2010). Marton's street photography of Paris was exhibited in California (2009) together with that of the 20th-century photographers Inge Morath and Max Yavno. In 2010–2011, Marton's photos of female nudes were exhibited with those of other Hungarian artists at the Institut hongrois in Paris.
Early life and education Ervin Marton was born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, in 1912 to István Preisz and his wife Janka Csillag, a Hungarian-Jewish couple. He had two sisters. Marton started drawing as a child; and as a teenager, he began to work in photography, although he never studied it formally.
A cousin-in-law by marriage was Lajos Tihanyi (1885–1938), one of the Hungarian artists' circle known as The Eight (Nyolcak) (1909–1918 in Budapest), who became a renowned painter and lithographer. In 1919, after the fall of the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic, Tihanyi emigrated to Vienna. He went on to Berlin, where he became friends with Brassaï and other younger Hungarian artists and writers.Brassai, Letters to My Parents , University of Chicago Press, 1995, p. 241, accessed 6 September 2010 After the Hungarian and Russian revolutions, many artists and intellectuals migrated to Berlin from Eastern and Central Europe. In the early 1920s, there was a "short-lived" synthesis here of the international avant-garde with artists and intellectuals of Western Europe.Krisztina Passuth, "Hungarian Art Outside Hungary: Berlin in the 1920s" , Hungarian Studies, 1994, Vol.19, No. 1-2, p. 132, accessed 2 February 2013
Lastly, Tihanyi emigrated to Paris in 1924, along with many other Hungarian artists,"Tihanyi, Lajos" , Terminartors, accessed 3 September 2010, including Brassai and André Kertész. After Ervin Marton went to Paris in 1937, Tihanyi introduced him to many of the friends in his large émigré circle."Ervin Marton" , Cohen Gallery, accessed 30 August 2010
After completing his Baccalaureate, Marton continued his studies at the Omike Drawing School in Budapest, under the artist Manó Vestróczy."Marton Ervin/Ervin Preisz" , Kieselbach (Galéria és Auksciósház), accessed 5 September 2010 He also studied at the Budapest Arts and Crafts Institute (1934–1937). During the summers from 1935 to 1937, he regularly spent time in Kalocsa, about 90 miles south of Budapest. Marton was fascinated by the Roma, whom he drew, painted and photographed there."Ervin Marton" , Photographie, 8 October 2004, accessed 30 August 2010 (in French)
Career In the 1930s, Marton had his first exhibit at galleries in Budapest, when he was in his early 20s. His graphic art exhibit in 1936 at the Műterem (Studio) Gallery with Aladár FarkasAladár Farkas became a sculptor and won the Munkácsy Award. In 1965, he produced a series of works on Vietnam. "Cultural Relations" , Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Embassy of Hungary, accessed 16 November 2010. was praised by the critic Artur Elek of the Nyugat,Artur Elek was among the important first generation of writers associated with the Nyugat (1908–1918). Mario D. Fenyo, "Literature and Political Change: Budapest, 1908–1918" , in Transactions, Vol. 77, Part 6, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1987, p. 8, accessed 16 November 2010 and the writers Mária Dutka and Ödön Gerő. Edit Hoffman purchased several of Marton's works from the exhibit for what became the Hungarian National Gallery (Magyar Nemzeti Galéria). Until 1946 and his father's death, Marton frequently signed his work using his father's name Preisz as a surname (Ervin Preisz), or sometimes using Paal (Paul).Marton Ervin Emlékkiállítása, Budapest: Hungarian National Gallery (Magyar Nemzeti Galéria), 1971; Open Library, accessed 1 September 2010
Marton became intrigued by the growing Esperanto movement and its concept that using one language would bring people together. He accepted a commission for a series of stamps that celebrated Esperantist ideals.
War years in Paris In 1937, Marton moved to Paris, a centre for artists and writers from across Europe and a refuge for Jews suffering anti-Semitism in their native lands of Germany and eastern Europe. He became part of the vibrant circle of Hungarian émigré artists. Marton continued to study as well. He took classes in painting and sculpture at the École des Beaux-Arts.
Through his cousin, the painter Lajos Tihanyi (who died in 1938), Marton became part of an older circle of established artists and writers. He got to know the photographer Brassai and the writer György Bölöni.György Bölöni was an important journalist and writer, who had written about the Hungarian avant-garde since the early 1900s; he was part of the Hungarian émigré group in Paris through World War II. In 1945, he returned to Hungary, where he later won major awards for his works. While in Paris, he wrote a book on the poet Endre Ady, first published in 1934, with photographs by Andre Kertész. He also wrote one on Jacques de la Frégonnière. GYÖRGY BÖLÖNI, Photographs by ANDRÉ KERTÉSZ, Az Igazi Ady (The Real Ady), Budapest: Magvető, 1955, accessed 17 November 2010Lajos Tihanyi painted portraits of Bölöni (1912) and de la Frégonnière (1933)."Tihanyi, Lajos" , Terminartors, accessed 3 September 2010. Marton also became connected to the writer Andor Németh and the painter Bertalan Pór. The latter was one of The Eight with Tihanyi in Budapest before World War I, and both men were also friends of Brassaï. Although Kertész had emigrated to New York City in 1936, he and Marton became friends during his regular trips to Europe.
After World War II started, the Germans invaded and occupied France (1940–1944). Marton was among the numerous immigrants who joined the French Resistance, working in a small group with other Hungarians and foreigners, many of them Jewish. As part of the Francs-Tireurs et Partisans – Main-d'Œuvre Immigrée (FTP-MOI) group in the Paris metropolitan area, Marton drew and distributed numerous underground flyers, which most partisan groups produced to keep up civilian morale.
In collaboration with the artist József Strémi, in the 1940s, Marton created the design for a stamp to celebrate the poet Sándor Petőfi, renowned for his role during the Hungarian Revolution of 1848.Kisebb közlemények , p. 315, in Hungarian In 1954, a catalogue was published in Paris that showed the significance of the widespread, but clandestine communications by the FTP-MOI and other groups.Imréné Hertczka, Jánosné Gál, Lajos Papp, and Bela Sos, Catalogue des périodiques clandestins diffusés en France de 1939 a 1955. Suivi d'un catalogues des périodiques clandestins diffusés à l'étranger, Paris, 1954
Marton also took part with Lajos Papp in several high-risk actions to prepare false documents for wanted persons and help them hide from the Nazis. Among those aided were a German writer and deserter, and the Hungarian artist Ferenc Varga. (A friend of Marton, Varga was the nephew of the noted novelist Zsigmond Móricz.)"Feri Varga – Life and Encounters" , Seite, accessed 2 December 2011
Numerous young Jewish Hungarian artists and intellectuals were part of the Resistance, including the painter Sándor Józsa, sculptor István Hajdú (Etienne Hajdu), journalists László Kőrösi and Imre Gyomrai, the photographers Andras (André) Steiner and Lucien Hervé (by then a French citizen), and the printer Ladislas Mandel.
Three Hungarian Jews were part of the Manouchian Group, which became legendary in the events of the Affiche Rouge. They were captured, subjected to a show trial, convicted and executed with 18 of their comrades in 1944."'Art proscrit' (Száműzött művészet), Exposition à Budapest du 17 avril au 15 aout 2010" , Blog des Mardis hongrois (French), reprinted from Török Zsuzsanna, Száműzött művészet, Budapest: Holokauszt Emlékközpont (HDKE), 2010, accessed 30 August 2010Art in Exile series: Belated Homecoming, 17 April to 15 Aug 2010, Holocaust Museum (HDKE), Budapest, accessed 7 September 2010 The Germans distributed posters to publicize their capture, which described them as criminals; citizens used the posters as rallying symbols for the opposition, marking them "Mort pour France!" (Died for France!) after the executions of the group. Marton made a graphic image for the Phenix, an underground pamphlet published in April 1944 by the Magyar Szemle (Revue Hongroise), to commemorate the three Hungarians killed from the Manouchian Group.Kisebb közlemények, p. 317, in Hungarian Jorge Semprún, a Spanish writer who also served in the Résistance, referred to Marton's group in a postwar novel about that period.Cate Marquis, "Film hits home for son of WWII Jewish Resistance fighter" , Jewish Light, 22 January 2009, accessed 30 August 2010
Marton was able to protect much of Tihanyi's and his own early work through the war, helped by his friendships with Brassai and Bölöni, who arranged for storage. Their support of Hungarian art continued after the war. In 1965, Kertész, Brassai and de la Frégonnière helped transfer the work of Tihanyi, Marton and other Hungarian artists to the Hungarian National Gallery, founded in 1957.Kincses, Károly. "Brassaï: The Hungarian Documents. A Chronology in Letters 1940–1984" , The Hungarian Quarterly (188/2007), pp. 58–84, accessed 9 September 2010
(Although Marton's parents survived The Holocaust in Budapest, they were weakened by deprivation and died of pneumonia soon after the end of the war. His two sisters were saved by Raoul Wallenberg, but the baby of one died during the war.)
Post-war years
Artistic activity in Paris rapidly revived in the years after the war. From 1944 to 1946, Marton worked with Bölöni and Por in the reorganization of the Hungarian House, a cultural centre for émigré artists. The community organized their own exhibits and discussions. He was invited to participate in many group exhibits, among which in 1947 were the Surrealist Exhibitions at the Galerie Maeght. That year, he also had works in the School of Paris exhibit in London, his first showing in that city.
Marton was also featured in solo shows: in 1948, the Galerie Palmes had a retrospective of his work. The catalogue’s preface was written by Louis Cherronnet, critic for the magazine Arts, who was a supporter of Marton's work. In 1953, the Galerie St. Jacques gave Marton a solo show. In the catalogue preface, the writer Blaise Cendrars described Marton as "the ace of white and black photography."