Background
VARGA, Imre was born on November 1, 1923 in Budapest. Son of Matyas Varga and Margit Csepeli.
VARGA, Imre was born on November 1, 1923 in Budapest. Son of Matyas Varga and Margit Csepeli.
He studied aeronautics at the Military Academy in Budapest. From 1950 to 1956, Varga studied at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest under Sándor Mikus and Pál Pátzay, graduating with a degree.
He is regarded as one of Hungary"s most important living artists, and he has been called one of the "most skilled sculptors in Hungary."
Even as a schoolboy, Varga"s drawings were exhibited in small exhibitions. During World World War II, he served as an officer in the Hungarian Air Force before being taken as a prisoner of war by the United States, returning to Hungary in 1945 when he turned to the visual arts Since then, Varga has worked in many different artistic fields.
He has made small statues and coins, as well as monumental works for public spaces.
One of his public statues is the Holocaust Memorial, located behind the Dohany Street Synagogue in Budapest"s Jewish Quarter District VII. The memorial is constructed in the shape of a weeping willow tree, with names of Hungarian Holocaust victims on the leaves. Another well-visited work by Varga is his group of worried-looking women with umbrellas permanently located in a square in Óbuda, Budapest near the Imre Varga Collection of his work.
He attended the first "Hungarian Fine Arts Exhibition", where his work "Iron Workers" was exhibited. His first high profile work, "Prometheus", was created in 1965.
In the 1970s, Varga broke away from the conventional monumentalism usually seen in Communist countries.
He created a wide array of works - ranging from statues of Vladimir Lenin to the Holocaust, to statues of Francis II Rákóczi, Raoul Wallenberg, Sir Winston Churchill and Béla Bartók to Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle. Márta Harangozó, Imre Varga, Bálint Ördögh, Judit Ruska (2003), The world of Imre Varga, Kossuth.
National; American Academy, of Arts and Sciences, Academie Europeenne des Arts et des Sciences, Paris.
Married Ildiko Szabb in 1944.
