Provence Landscape, Olive Trees Craggy Stone, Hungarian Emigre Artist

A wonderfully strong, life affirming Provence landscape by Hungarian-born Lopold Starkmann de Fltorony.

Starkmann was born in Budapest in either 1909 or 1914, according to different sources. His birth coincides with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and in his youth, the young artist knew hunger, political unrest and upheavals.

He tried to emigrate to America, but was tragically refused. After a long and painful journey, he arrived in Paris, with a thirty-day visa in his pocket -which he would later call in his autobiography his "visa for hope".

And indeed, France fulfilled the artist's hopes, and perhaps for this reason, Starkmann's painting have a vigorous, unassailable quality - a bit like Provence itself. As we can see, the rugged landscape with its olive trees and white stone reflecting the heat suited him well.

Starkmann exhibited at the Parisian Galerie Andr Weil, with four one man shows between 1951 and 1957.

Spending time both in the French Capital and in Vallauris, the art' colony in Provence, he exhibited at the Salon des Indpendents in 1960, and between 1950 and 1965 at Salons in the South of France. Paintings by Starkmann were acquired by the French State and the Muse d'Art Moderne in Paris. An oil from 1953 - the same year in which the painting presented here was created - is presently in the Chateau de Sceaux.

Signed and dated at the lower right, our oil on canvas measures 46 x 61 cm. The overall framed size in a luxurious frame is 60 x 75 cm.