Biography of Anne Beothy-Steiner
Hungarian painter, draughtswoman and silkscreen artist Anne Beöthy-Steiner was born in 1902 in Otada (Nagyvárad, Austria-Hungary). Anna Steiner studied journalism between 1922 and 1925 at Álmos Jaschik's private art school in Budapest. After graduating, she began teaching painting at a private school. She then travelled extensively, visiting Austria, Germany and Italy, where she met Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, whose Futurist ideas influenced her, as well as Robert Delaunay's Orphism.
The many Hungarian artists who lived abroad in the first decades of the 20th century, including István Beöthy (her future husband), József Csáky, Lajos Ébneth, Alfréd Forbát, Jolán Gross-Bettelheim, Vilmos Huszár, Lajos Kassák, Gusztáv Miklós and László Moholy-Nagy, were key figures recognized throughout the art world. Less well-known is Anne Beöthy-Steiner. The tense period of the decades around the First World War gave rise to a kind of creative drive, a desire for novelty, resulting in the emergence of many new trends and genres, which became conducive to the expression of a new, vibrant spirit. This avant-garde became at once a stylistic concept, a movement and a worldview. The importance of the Hungarian avant-garde was first highlighted by Ernő Kállai (Új magyar piktúra, 1925). Many emigrated from their homeland to important art centers: Vienna and, of course, Berlin (Weimar and the Bauhaus). From the outset, Hungarian artists were in contact not only with Western countries, but also with the centers of Central Europe; they quickly adapted to their new environments and developed their own style within international groups. Not only did they settle down in each country, but in a short space of time they became shapers of public cultural life, active members of artists' groups and movements, and dynamic players in the art world.The sculptor István Beöthy belonged to the group Abstraction Création - of which he was a founding member - its circle offers an international network of contacts and a platform for abstract artists in France, particularly those of foreign origin. His work "Színes város" grew out of the Golden Line theory (1919). He is best remembered as a major exponent of geometric abstraction.Anne Beöthy Steiner moved to Paris in 1927, where she met her future husband, István Beöthy. They first lived on rue Daguerre, then moved to Montrouge, near Paris, where they lived until their death. Resolutely abstract in conception, her paintings, often in gouache on paper, drawings and serigraphs are often composed in bright colors. Anne Beöthy-Steiner abandoned her own creative work in 1937 to devote herself exclusively to supporting and promoting her husband's art. It was only after her husband's death in 1961 that she began painting again, taking up the path she had interrupted in the late '30s. In her creations, she once again creates colorful forms that result in sophisticated, sensitive compositions, moving away from strict, dry geometric abstraction. Her major works were produced between 1927 and 1934. Parallel to her painting, during this period she produced illustrations for magazines, as well as fabric and fashion designs, all showing the interpenetration and superimposition of simple, geometric color surfaces. Her creations, based on flat areas of color, anticipated the ideas of Op Art.Anne Beöthy Steiner, sometimes known as Beöthyné-Steiner, died in 1985 in Montrouge.
