Theodore Fried

Theodore Fried (May 19, 1902 -1980 - known to his friends as Tivadar Fried) was a Hungarian artist, who worked in Vienna, Paris and NewYork.

Fried was born in Budapest (or possibly Szeged) in 1902. His father - a watchmaker and jeweller- died when he was nine years old. In 1920 he entered the Budapest Academy of Fine Arts and studied under Gyula Rudnay for four years. His surviving early work includes charcoal drawings of scenes of life which reflect the hardship and poverty of the period after the First World War. To broaden his horizons he moved to Vienna in June 1924 taking with him seven oil paintings and sixty drawings. He was given a one-man exhibition at the Galerie Hugo Heller. This gallery was run by the Heller family. Hugo Heller, who had died the previous year, had been a bookseller and a central figure in Viennese cultural life, who was particularly noted for promoting the writings of Sigmund Freud. It was through the Galerie that he came to meet the younger generation of Austrian artists, who were connected with the Hagenbund and Art Critics and Art Historians such as Fritz Grossmann and Fritz Novotny. It was also through the Heller family connection that he is likely have met his first wife, Anna Politzer, the daughter of a Viennese goldsmith. He had a further exhibition at Galerie Hugo Heller in early 1925, but in June 1925 moved to Paris.

On his move to Paris he established himself as a member of the Ecole de Paris. He set up a studio in Montmartre and through his acquaintance with the Belgian writer and avant garde painter, Ferdinand Berckelaers Michael Seuphor he was introduced to the Paris art scene. Seuphor was Hungarian speaking and this led to Fried meeting the Hungarian photographer André Kertész, with whom he established a lifelong friendship. Together with Kertész, Fried spent much of his time at Le Dôme Café, a popular meeting place for the many artists who had come to Paris at this time. Later that year Fried exhibited his first painting at the Salon d'Automne amongst the foreign grouping ’’beaux-arts de la France d'outre-mer” which at that time included Picasso and Chagall. In 1926 he married Anna Politzer, who had just completed her Doctorate at Jena University.

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