Shivaji Designs for Stained-Glass Windows: The Art of Ervin Bossanyi (Discovery‪)‬

Ervin Bossanyi (1891-1975) was born near Baja, Hungary in 1891. His artistic talent was recognized at an early stage by his parents and subsequently by the National Hungarian Royal School of Applied Arts in Budapest, where he studied from the age of 14. The gifts Ervin exhibited at this school were rewarded with a first-class diploma and a major travelling scholarship from the Hungarian Ministry of Commerce that enabled him to study abroad. He chose to spend his time in Rome, also briefly at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and the Camden School of Art in London. This brought new ideas and directions in his art and opened doors to other works of creativity and culture. Ervin's artistic career prospered further in Hamburg, Lubeck, and other important places in northern Germany and he became an important figure in that region by 1933. Unfortunately the prospect of further success receded with the rise of Nazism and Ervin prepared to leave Germany for England. His career was dogged by turmoil, war, and fascism in the world around him. He died in London, on July 11, 1975. Ervin was a prolific painter and draughtsman throughout his life, producing many hundreds of paintings, drawings, and sketches in different mediums from oils to watercolours and pastels. Twelve of his small watercolours made during his internment in the First World War in Brittany are in the Prints and Drawings Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The others are at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, St Annen-Museum in Lubeck, Germany, and in private collections. This versatile artist also worked in a wide variety of other media, including ceramics, murals, tiles, furniture, metalwork, as well as stained-glass.