Anna Beöthy-Steiner (1902-1985): Untitled

Artist
Anna Beöthy-Steiner (1902–1985)
 
Title
Composition – from the portfolio La Lune en Rodage III
 
Medium
Silkscreen print on paper
 
Dimensions
28 x 21.5 cm
 
Editor
Edition Panderma, Basel
 
Year
1966, published 1977
 
Signature
Hand signed in pencil
 
Provenance
Edition Panderma, Carl Laszlo, Basel
Galerie von Bartha, Basel
Private Collection, Basel
 
Condition
Mint archival condition
 
Biography
 
Anna Beöthy-Steiner (1902, Nagyvárad – 1985, Paris) was an important Hungarian-French avant-garde painter and a pioneering woman of geometric abstraction. She trained at the private art school of Álmos Jaschik in Budapest, and her travels through Austria, Germany, and Italy brought her into contact with Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's Futurism and the Orphism of Robert Delaunay. From 1927 she lived in Paris, where she married the sculptor István Beöthy.
 
In 1931 she became one of the founding members of the legendary group Abstraction-Création, alongside Arp, Gabo, Herbin, Kupka, Mondrian, Nicholson, and Vantongerloo. Her finest works date from 1927 to 1934—gouaches, watercolours, and designs built from the interpenetration and overlapping of simple geometric colour planes whose precise proportions reflect a deep concern with harmony and balance. From 1932 her compositions were defined by the contrast of pure colours, creating flat colour spaces that anticipated the ideas of Op Art. After interrupting her practice in 1934, she returned to art only in the 1960s, following her husband's death. Her work is held in international collections and regularly appears at leading auction houses including Christie's.