Background
Lajos Kassak was born on March 21, 1887 in Nové Zámky, Nitra, present-day Slovakia.
Lajos Kassak was born on March 21, 1887 in Nové Zámky, Nitra, present-day Slovakia.
In 1904 Kassak arrived in Budapest, where he worked in a factory on the outskirts of the city. He participated in the labor union movement, and organized several strikes. In 1905 Lajos was fired several times for organizing strikes.
At the age of 20 Kassak began traveling on foot throughout Europe and so gained a cosmopolitan outlook.
A pacifist during World War I, he founded the journal Tett ("Action") in 1915 to express his views. After "Tett' was proscribed, Kassak founded and edited the avant-garde Activist journal "MA" in 1916.
Although Kassak's early work was strongly influenced by Dada, some time later he became a Constructivist since he was now inspired by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. In 1921 Lajos formulated the theoretical agenda of Hungarian Constructivism.
In November, 1924 Kassak joined many well-known sculptors and painters of his day, including Brancusi, Arp and Schwitters, in showing work at the "First International Exhibition of Modern Art" in Bucharest.
In 1926 Kassak continued editing and publishing journals, such as Munka (Work) and Dokumentum (Document), both of which were independent leftist avant-garde journals.
In 1945 he started to edit the journal Kortars until 1947, when Lajos was appointed the head of the Social Democratic Party's Art Commission.
In 1966 Kassak participated in the large-scale Dada exhibition, mounted by the Zurich Kunsthalle and the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris.
City
Composition (Hugging)
Composition
Constructivist Composition
Red Rug
Architectural Structures
Picturial Architecture
Composition
Composition
Picturial Architecture V
Pictorial Architecture
Goldfish
Garden Motif
Black Circle of Chalk
Collage I
Equilibrium
To mozi
Képarchitektúra
Composition (Red Forms)
Wooden Relief
Untitled
Folk Motives (variation)
Collage II
Untitled (Twenty)
In 1948 Lajos became a member of parliament for Social Democratic Party of Hungary, which later was transformed into Hungarian Working People's Party. A year later the painter had to change seats in the Parliament, and later he had to resign, and finally retire because of the change of the political climate. In 1953, Kassak criticised the Party's cultural politics and was expelled.
Quotations: "The father of every good work is discontent, and its mother is diligence."