Lot 431: Akos Zsoter (Hungarian, 1895-1983) Portrait of Maurice de Vlaminck (1876-1958)

Portrait of Maurice de Vlaminck (1876-1958)
Signed and inscribed, oil on canvas board,
44 x 37cm (17 5/16 x 14 9/16in).

Akos Zsoter was born in Hungary in 1895. At 17 he enrolled at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts, studying under Kampf until the outbreak of the First World War. Captured on the Russian Front in 1916, he subsequently attended the Academie des Beaux Arts in St Petersburg, before returning to his studies in Budapest in 1922. In the 1920's and '30's he worked in Paris and Barbizon, befriending Soutine and Maurice de Vlaminck, the French Fauvist artist, whom this portrait depicts. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Zsoter emigrated to London, and exhibited frequently at the Royal Academy, amongst others, until his death in 1983.