János Thorma

János Thorma (24 April 1870 – 5 December 1937) was a Hungarianpainter. A representative figure of the Nagybánya artists' colony, which started in 1896 at what is today Baia Mare, Romania, he moved through different styles. He shifted from the naturalism that was the aesthetic of the colony, to historical subjects, to romantic realism and to a Post-Impressionism style. His work is held by the Hungarian National Gallery, the Thorma János Múzeum, regional museums and private collectors.

In 1966, the Hungarian National Gallery held a major commemorative exhibition, The Art of Nagybánya, commemorating the innovations of Thorma and fellow artists. In February 2013, it opens a major retrospective of more than 100 pieces of János Thorma's work, drawing from numerous institutions and private collectors in Europe.

János Thorma was born in 1870 in Kiskunhalas, Kingdom of Hungary, Austria-Hungary to Béla Thorma, a tax agency cashier, and his wife Gizella Fekete. The family moved to Nagybánya when the youth was 14. He began to study art at Bertalan Székely's drawing school.

At the age of 18, he went to Munich, where he studied from 1888 to 1890 under the Hungarian painter, Simon Hollósy, who held free classes. Following a path similar to other young artists from Austria-Hungary, in 1891 and 1893–95, Thorma also went to Paris, where he studied at the Académie Julian.

His first significant painting, Szenvedők (The Bereaved), was exhibited at the Budapest Art Gallery, then at the Paris Salon in 1894. In 1896, on the occasion of the millennium of the Magyars' conquest of Pannonia, he presented his painting about The 13 Martyrs of Arad, Aradi vértanúk (The Martyrs of Arad), which gained him nationwide renown in Hungary. Many of his early works were large canvases on historical themes.

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