Béla Uitz
Hungary (1887—1972)Born in the Kingdom of Hungary, in what is now Romania, Béla Uitz studied in Budapest and first exhibited in 1914. He soon became closely involved with the Hungarian avant-garde, working with Lajos Kassák as a publisher of MA from 1916 and, after the fall of the Hungarian Soviet Republic, moving to Vienna, where he founded Egység with Aladár Komját. His journey to Moscow in 1921 for the Third Congress of the Comintern brought him into contact with the Russian avant-garde and Constructivism, whose principles profoundly influenced his artistic development. From 1924 to 1926 he lived in Paris, contributing under the pseudonym W. U. Martel to several publications before moving to Moscow, where he taught at VKhUTEMAS and VKhUTEIN. In the early 1930s he became involved in the International Bureau of Revolutionary Artists and subsequently devoted himself to monumental frescoes and decorative projects for public spaces. He returned to Hungary only in 1970, two years before his death.
