Jozsa Jaritz
1893 – 1986

Jozsa Jaritz was born in Budapest 1893, to an upper middle-class family.

From 1912 to 1913 she was a student of Lajos Ebner Deak at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest. In 1914, she was a student of Bela Ivanyi Grunwald at the Kecsjenet artists’ colony. During World War One she continued her studies with Grunwald.

In 1919 she studied with Robert Bereny, in 1920-1921 she was one of Janos Vaszary’s first students. In 1922 she had a joint exhibition with Istvan Csok, Jozsef Rippl-Ronai and Janos Vaszary in the Helikon Gallery. Jaritz enjoyed success at the exhibition, and in October of that year, sponsored by her father, she organized her first solo exhibition at the National Salon. Her father died few days before the opening.

Jaritz came to Paris in 1924, she lived there for the next seven years. She earned a living as a dance teacher while pursuing her art. She met Piet Mondrian, who was among her students. During this period she regularly exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants.

In 1924 she exhibited at the Galerie Visconti. She was a founding member of the New Artists’ Society (UME), she exhibited at the second exhibition of the Artists’ (KUT) in 1925, she continued to present her works at the Society’s later exhibitions between1930 and 1941. She had an exhibition at the Salon des Vrais Indépendants in 1928. In 1930 she returned to Hungary.

Jaritz, in 1931, formed the Female Artists’ Group with 13 other artists. In 1938 she had a solo exhibition in Tamas Gallery. She participated in the Lady Artists’ International Exhibition in London and in jubilee exhibition of the Hungarian Artists’ Society at the National Salon. In 1939 she took part in a Lady painters’ joint exhibition in New York. In 1947 she presented her works at the first exhibition without jury of the National Salon, then, in 1949 she participated in the Female Artists’ Joint Exhibition.

After ten years absence, in 1959 she exhibited at the Ernst Museum in Budapest. Her one-woman show opened in MOM Cultural Center in 1965, then in the Ernst Museum in 1968. In 1970 she exhibited at the Briar Galleries in Chicago and at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris. In 1971 she had another exhibition at the Salon des Artistes Français et Salon International des Beaux-Arts. In 1972 her exhibition was opened at Galerie I. De Balas in Brussels. At the same time she was member of the Société des Artistes Indépendants and exhibited at the Grand Palais in Paris. She organized exhibitions of her paintings in Kiskunmajsa, Hungary, in 1979 and in 1983. She died in Budapest in 1986. In the 1990’s there were several gallery exhibitions of her paintings, and in 2002 there was a retrospective exhibition at the Hungarian Cultural Center in Vienna.

Jaritz was a modernist, with a long and successful career. Her earliest paintings exhibited tendencies toward Expressionism; as she progressed her works took on elements of the Cubists and Secessionists, but throughout her style was unique. She used a dry brush technique that gives her paintings an unusual, almost pastel quality. In recent years, since the fall of the Soviet Union, there has be a rediscovery of the Hungarian contribution to the art of the 20th century, Jaritz will certainly become an integral part as that history is rewritten.