A Hungarian Gipsy artist

Curatorial Note

A Hungarian Gipsy Artist presents the work and life of János Balázs (1905–1977), a Hungarian Romani painter and poet whose highly distinctive visual language emerged outside formal artistic institutions. Combining reproductions of his paintings with autobiographical writing and poetry, the volume provides unusual access to Balázs’s artistic world through both visual and textual forms. His work draws together personal experience, imagination, Romani cultural references, and elements of Hungarian culture, making the publication particularly significant for the study of twentieth-century Romani visual art, artistic self-representation, and the emergence of Roma artists within the cultural history of Hungary.