Mattis-Teutsch studied at the National Hungarian Royal School for Applied Arts (now Hungarian University of Fine Arts) in Budapest from 1901 till 1903.
Gallery of János Mattis-Teutsch
Akademiestraße 2-4, 80799 München, Germany
Mattis-Teutsch studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts between 1903 and 1905.
Mattis-Teutsch studied at the National Hungarian Royal School for Applied Arts (now Hungarian University of Fine Arts) in Budapest from 1901 till 1903.
János Mattis-Teutsch was a Hungarian and Romanian artist, sculptor, art critic, and poet. He was a representative of the art movement of Constructivism.
Background
Mattis-Teutsch was born in Braşov, Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary (now part of Romania), on August 13, 1884. He was the son of János Mátis and Josefin Schneider. His father died during Mattis-Teutsch's early years, and his mother remarried Friedrich Teutsch, who adopted János.
Education
János Mattis-Teutsch completed primary school in Hungaria. Then he attended the German-language Honterus Secondary School. He studied at the carpentry school in Kronstadt, and at the National Hungarian Royal School for Applied Arts (now Hungarian University of Fine Arts) in Budapest from 1901 till 1903. Then Mattis-Teutsch left for Munich, where he studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts between 1903 and 1905.
Mattis-Teutsch's first public exhibition took place in 1907. He became a teacher at the State Woodwork School in 1908, and replaced János Kupcsay as professor ("scholar master") in 1910. Between 1908 and 1915 he gradually shifted from naturalistic painting with religious and ethical themes to an abstract form of representation. He had close contacts with local artists, including Friedrich Miess, Gyula Tutschek, Gusztáv Kollár, Hermann Morres, and Hans Eder. Mattis-Teutsch exhibited his first sculptures during a joint show in Pest in 1910.
He displayed his artworks in the Sturm show in Budapest in 1913, then in a Gyula Vastagh-organized exhibit in his native town in 1914. János Mattis-Teutsch became an acquaintance of Lajos Kassák, and published linocut drawings in the modern art magazine MA in 1917. Some of his later pictures were also printed in MA. Later that year, MA published an album of prints featuring twelve of his linocuts.
The artist's second show also took place in the MA building in Budapest in 1918. He was influenced by the abstract art of Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich, and moved towards a non-figurative outlook. After World War I, he returned to his hometown, in 1918 he joined Der Sturm.
In 1919 Mattis-Teutsch resided for some time in Transylvania, and organized several exhibitions there. As the region became part of the Romanian Kingdom and, for a while, his teaching position was being reconsidered by the new authorities, he had the intention to relocate to Germany. However, he decided to remain in Romanian artistic life, and regularly participated in art shows in Bucharest and throughout Transylvania.
János Mattis-Teutsch had shows in Berlin and Vienna in 1921. The same year he took part in the Der Sturm exhibition. Then he had shows in Paris, Chicago, Rome, and Berlin. His works were displayed at the 1924 international exhibition organized by Contimporanul. The artist visited the Bauhaus in 1925. The death of his daughter in 1933 and political factors caused him to cease his work until the 1940s. From 1944 to 1949 he taught at the Kronstadt Section of the Romanian Society of Visual Artists, where he was also a director from 1957 till 1959.
János Mattis-Teutsch was a committed anti-Fascist and spoke out against the influence of Nazism inside the Transylvanian Saxon community. After World War II, with the onset of the Soviet occupation and the establishment of the communist regime, Mattis-Teutsch's earlier works became a subject to propaganda attacks while he attempted to adapt to the themes of Socialist realism, producing portraits of Joseph Stalin and Stakhanovite scenes featuring bricklayers and miners.
Membership
János Mattis-Teutsch was a member of the artists' group known as the Sebastian Hann Verein. From 1918 he became a member of the group Abstrakte Gruppe der Sturm in Berlin.
Abstrakte Gruppe der Sturm
,
Germany
1918
Connections
János Mattis-Teutsch married Gisella Borsos in 1909. Their wedding caused a scandal because she had broken off her engagement to someone else. However, his wife died in 1916. In 1919 he remarried Marie Conrad, an Austrian woman. They had a daughter, who died in 1933.
Father:
János Mátis
Mother:
Josefin Schneider
Spouse:
Gisella Borsos
Spouse:
Marie Conrad
stepfather:
Friedrich Teutsch
References
Janos Mattis Teutsch and the Hungarian avant-garde 1910-1935
Teutsch was a painter of landscape. His experiments, gleaned from the vaious guises of the European avant garde, never diluted his love of the Hungarian countryside. The rigor of his compositional filter kept the sentimental at bay and exalts the power of color. The subtle pleasure of viewing this artist derives from the way he mediates between the imperatives of his own sentiments about his native landscape, and the broader imperatives of historical avant garde art making.