Emil Lindenfeld (Hungarian-American 1905-1986)

Born in Hungary, Emil Lindenfeld studied there under Janos Tornai and Sandor Fay. In 1926, he went to Italy where he lived and painted for 30 years and received the honor of election to the Councilor of Italian Fine Arts in 1946. 

In 1956, at the time of the uprising in Hungary, he emigrated to New York City with his first wife, who had survived the concentration camps and whose dream was to come to America. An interesting anecdote is that Emil and Eva were booked to sail on the ill-fated Andrea Doria, with his life's work of several hundred paintings. Fortunately the Italian government caused much red tape over the departure of classic Italian art work. If it were not for this bureaucratic delay, his best work would be at the bottom of the Atlantic. The Lindenfelds then sailed on the sister ship of the Doria.

Lindenfeld's work was exhibited at Barnard College, the New York Coliseum (1957) with Frank Lloyd Wright, and in the 1960s, exhibitions of Lindenfeld's work were held in Charlotte, North Carolina (1966 & 1968, 1976); Detroit, Michigan (1969) and Weirton, West Virginia (1969, 1970). From April 2-May 31, 1983, he had a one-man show, "The World of Emil Lindenfeld," at the Morris Museum of Arts and Sciences in Morristown, New Jersey.


Following are excerpts from the catalogue of the Morris Museum exhibit: 

"His impressionistic technique, with fast fleeting reverberations of romanticism, is really a dream mystique as potent as the furthest depths of the human psyche. . . .Often Mr. Lindenfeld assumes the place of a clairvoyant by approaching the role of a mystic poet turning all meaning upside down and inside out. . . .Lindenfeld's paintings are filled with simple people, villagers, nomads, and gypsies who speak to us loud and clear. There seems to be a prevailing spirit of St. Francis again and again reiterated if only we could ponder it. . . .Many of the compositions of Lindenfeld are dictated by an eccentricity divorced from all common sense and normal behavior. He has always before him the unreachable goal of the symbolists's search for the ideal."

COLLECTIONS-EUROPEAN MUSEUMS
Galleria D'Arge Moderna Milan
Museo Castello Sforzesco, Milan
Mseo Nazionale Forestale, Rome
Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Verona, Italy
Museo Civico Vicenz, italy
Museo Civico Asiago, italy
Museo Civico, Padova, Italy
City Museum Hodmezovasarhely, Hungary
Galerie National Hongroise, Budapest