Simon Hollósy

Simon Hollósy; (2 February 1857, Máramarossziget, now Sighetu Marmaţiei – 8 May 1918, Técső, now Tiachiv, now Ukraine) was a Hungarian painter. He was considered one of the greatest Hungarian representatives of 19th-century Naturalism and Realism.

Hollósy was not highly productive as an artist and was more important as an influential teacher, who influenced the painters of the Nagybanya artists' colony. Together, they were significant in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Hungarian art. In 1966 the Hungarian National Gallery had a major exhibition of the colony's work: The Art of Nagybánya. Centennial Exhibition in Celebration of the Artists' Colony in Nagybánya.

Simon Hollósy was born in 1857 in Máramarossziget, Hungary (present-day Sighetu Marmaţiei, Romania). His parents were Armenians who had migrated to the area. He early expressed a talent and interest in art.

As a young man, he went to Munich to study, as did many artists from Hungary because there was no academy of fine arts there. Hollósy criticized the training at the Munich Academy, which was strongly based on copying classical models. He founded a private school where he gave free classes, attracting young talents who were interested in realistic portrayal. He opened the way to new styles by relying on his personality and by pointing out the merits of French painters, such as Gustave Courbet, who exhibited in the city. He abandoned the academic style in order to follow new trends in French painting, including Impressionism. He also "admired Jules Breton, Jules Bastien-Lepage and read Zola, Murger, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky."

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