ART & ARTISTS: Mihály Biró

Wednesday, 2 October 2024

Mihály Biró - part 1

Mihály Biró is internationally considered as the founder of political poster art, he is world-famous for his revolutionary designs from the 1910s.

His family was Jewish, his father changed the family name to Biró in 1895. Between 1904 and 1918 he studied at the School of Applied Arts in Budapest. From 1908 to 1910 he travelled to Munich, Berlin, and finally to England, where he became a pupil of Charles Robert Ashbee, and won the award of “The Studio” magazine. This journey makes it quite possible, that he was inspired by the art of leftist German and English magazines (like Simplicissimus or Punch), however he has later created new artistic value in the field of political propaganda design. In the studio of Ashbee, Biró was definitely influenced by the English “Arts & Crafts” movement.

After arriving back to Budapest, he came in contact with the members of the Social Democratic Party in Hungary, and he became the leading graphic artist of their newspaper, Népszava (People’s Voice). During the 1910s, he produced his best work. In 1912, he designed a poster for the newspaper, which became his most famous work (known as the red man with hammer or red-hammer-wielding man). As a thoroughly convinced leftist artist, with a strong proletarian conscience, he has created the posters for the demonstrations for voting rights organised by the Social Democratic Party.

In 1919, after the Hungarian Soviet Republic was formed, Biró became the leading propaganda artist: he created posters, festive decorations, sculptures, etc. After the fall of the short-lived soviet regime, Biró had to flee: he was invited to Berlin by dr. Hans Sachs, who was the leading poster collector and author on poster art (founder of the Das Plakat journal). Later he worked for Austrian leftist parties, and commercial companies. In 1920, he has published his “Horthy album” about the horrors of white terror in Hungary. He also worked in Berlin, but soon he had to flee from Germany because of the Nazi threat: first to Austria, then Slovakia, and then to Paris. After the Nazi occupation of the city, he was not sent to concentration camp because of his bad physical condition. After the end of the war, in 1947, the socialist government of Hungary called him back: Biró received great honours and a villa in Buda. Because of his serious illness he was unable to accept the university position that was offered to him. He died in 1948.

Biro’s posters are defined by the secessionist or Art Noveau style of the beginning of the century. His political posters are widely considered outstanding because of their expressive power. He was able to create long-lasting, monumental symbols for political parties and ideas. He often used monumental (male) figures, which embodied a whole social class or the society itself. Biró liked to use international socialist symbols, like the red colour, the sickle and hammer etc., but he has created new symbols too, like the red clenched fist, or the red-hammer-wielding man. Red and black are the two colours that define many of his works. Biró was very versatile in his use of typography: the text on his posters often becomes an organic part of the composition.

Besides the political posters, he also had a lighter, humorous and decorative side, which is manifested in his commercial and theatre posters. Many of these posters (Palma, Unicum, Gyerünk az Edison mozgóba, Nyugat) have the same artistic value as his best propaganda designs.

(Apologies for the variations in the caption type, uploads playing up)

This is part 1 of a 2-part post on the works of Mihály Biró:

c1910 MTK Pályán
(MTK on the track)
125.7 x 95.2 cm

1911 A Da'ma
125 x 94 cm

1911 Julius 30.
details not found

1911 Pauker office supplies
13 x 6 cm

1911 The people of Hungary pay 285 million for the Military!
postcard 9 x 14 cm

1911-12 Pauker paper products
details not given

1912 Adria Buffet
126 x 95 cm

c1911 Palma shoe heels
details not found

1911 Palma shoe heels
63 x 95 cm

1912 Az Alkohol (Anti Alcohol)

The Grim Reaper, all bones and black void, lords over a scene of family carnage in this bleak commandment. "Alcohol is poison, it kills, it makes you stupid and plunges you into distress," it reads. The Reaper's skeletal hand forces the eye down to the prone, naked infant in lower centre, concentrating one upon the idea that alcoholism has consequences upon subsequent generations.

1912 Az Alkohol (Anti Alcohol)
details not found

1912 Munkások! Polgarok! (Workers! Citizens!)

"Workers! Citizens! On March 4, Monday morning, we shall march to parliament to ask the gentlemen: 'What's to become of the decent, honest right to vote?" Biró's red fist, thrusting like a bomb-blast from the factories to Parliament, is an image of solidarity and indignant rage that's seldom been equaled. In the Hapsburg Empire, the rule of law was autocratic, heavily weighting any conflict to the side of state authorities. By 1912, people could clearly see how conservatives were using nationalist impulses to threaten war and tamp down socialist actions and democratic sentiment. That May, Social-Democratic threats of worker strikes sparked riots in Budapest, the worst civil violence in the city since 1848.

1912 Munkások! Polgarok! (Workers! Citizens!)
95.2 x 26.5 cm

Porosz Szén (Prussian Coal)
63 x 95 cm

c1912 Yost (Typewriter)
95 x 63 cm

c1912 Pauker (Fountain Pen)
120 x 911 cm

1913 Ime így Ad Tisza- Lukács Választó jogot a Munkássaágnak!

A giant bound by restraints that are as individually feeble, as they are collectively cruel. The Hungarian Social Democratic Party sends this message: "Here's how Tisza-Lukács gives the working people the right to vote! Two years of continuous labor a limit of 30 years old 6 years of elementary school compulsory registration Exam. Fight against this distorted proposal! Prepare for mass strike!" Tisza was Hungary's Speaker of the House, and Lukács its Prime Minister in 1912-1913. Together, they were adamantly opposed to any expansion of the franchise. As the Hungarian political economist Karl Polanyi noted, "They who wish to topple [Tisza] by means of the introduction of universal suffrage would in the process overthrow Hungary's landowning autocracy. This is why Hungary's entire opposition is nothing but a phantom behind Tisza the true rulers of the country are the landowners and the Church, and they face no real opposition in Parliament!”

1913 Ime így Ad Tisza- Lukács Választó jogot a Munkássaágnak!
(This is how Tisza Lukács gives the right to vote to the Workers' Branch!)
126.5 x 95.2 cm

1914 Népszava

Népszava means "The Voice of the People," and it was the newspaper for Hungary's left wing. When Biró's most iconic image, the Red Man with Hammer, appeared on a poster in 1912 superimposed upon the image of a Népzsava front page there was no mistaking the meaning. This was big news. Bíro created several variants of this iconic work. This version is from 1914, at the breakout of the Great War, and features a phalanx of cartoonish Austro-Hungarian soldiers desperately trying to restrain Red Hammer Man with chains (echoing the Marxist slogan, "Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!") while Népszava's lettering is blocked out, censored, naturally, since "the first casualty of war is the truth."

1913 Népszava (The voice of the People)
Republic of Hungary

1914 Állatkert (Budapest Zoo, underground aquarium)
94 x 62.5 cm

1914 Népszava (The voice of the People)
95 x 63.2 cm

1914 A Társaság' (The Society) was an illustrated weekly magazine about literature and culture.

A Társaság (The Society) illustrated journal first issue
63 x 95 cm

1915 Apollo theatre
126 x 94 cm

1915 Müvész-Sorsjáték (Artist's Lottery)

As the Great War stretched beyond its second year. The text at the bottom invites us to an artistic or craftsman-lottery for the benefit of the villages of Saros County, which were destroyed by Russian forces. In the crimson flames you can discern the outline of a Russian officer leaving the scene of his crimes. Saros County is among the northernmost of the territories of the old Magyar kingdom, and became part of Czechoslovakia in WWI's aftermath.

1915 Müvész-Sorsjáték
94.7 x 63.2 cm

1917 Jegyezzünk Hadikölcsönt
Let's sign a War Loan 126 x 95 cm

1917 Dr. Lauffen

The film was directed by Carl Wilhelm, a prolific German producer and screenwriter of the silent film era, and the film was a Hungarian-German coproduction.

1917 Dr. Lauffen film poster
95 x 126 cm

1917 Money leads to Victory!
Let's sign a War Loan
126 x 95 cm

1917 Pesti Napló (Pesti Diary)
91 x 61 cm

1918 A Pokol (Hell)
125 x 61 cm

1918 Az Ember

Cultura Budapest “The Man." This symbolic image, advertising a Hungarian political weekly of the same name, is unmistakable in its meaning. Beyond the bars, at the prisoner's feet, you can just barely discern the outlines of flowers, too faint to smell.