​Janos Major was born in 1934 in Budapest. He drew well as a child. His first teacher was a draughtsman in his father’s glass cutting shop. His father, Imre Neufeld, – drafted to the slave labor army – disappeared on the Ukrainian front while his family was forced into hiding in Budapest due to their Jewish descent.

 

In 1947, the 13 year old became a student in Almos Jaschik’s private art school where he studied for three years until the master’s death. He was greatly influenced by Jaschik, this is where he learned about perspective. Later, he studied at the Fine Art High School and the Academy of Fine Arts at the painting department (1952-1954) under Bela Ban, who was forced out from his position, his students were dismissed “despoiled” by his influence.

 

After a year working at the Orion factory as a laborer and making drawings of the women labourers there, he was re-admitted to the Academy in the graphics department of Karoly Koffan. During the 1956 October Revolution he made a sketch of a corpse hanging by his feet from a lamppost. Next year he made a copper etching of this corpse, a masterwork, and one of the two extant plates today as he periodically destroyed his own work: prints, drawings, photographs, plates, tools, etc.

 

His diploma work in 1959 were the etchings Working Women and Morning. At that time he was influenced by Martin Schongauer, Mathias Grunewald and Bela Kondor. After finishing his studies at the Academy, he became familiar with the works of Max Ernst and Lajos Vajda. In the early 60’s, he experimented with surface effects and soon he gained notoriety among his peers. He made his own tools with beautifully carved handles, set up his printer, a converted clothes press.

 

His works from the 60s are characterized by technical inventions, by its distinctive spatial vision i.e. rendering different slices of space side by side and marked features such as window, mirror – sources of allusions. Quite a few works from these years examine his Jewish identity. He married Eva Buchmuller in 1964, they had two daughters together: Borbala, 1965 and Rebeka, 1971.

 

There was only official art by artists officially recognized as such and they were supported by two government institutions: the “Fine Arts Foundation” and the “Art Gallery”. During this period he earned his living making etchings of landmarks, factories, farm cooperatives, commissioned by these government institutions. In order to get these works accepted by the jury of bureaucrats, he could not work in his own style – a great torture –and ended up often with grotesque results. In the 60’s and early 70’s a young group of artists broke out of this mold: there were many unofficial group shows at universities, colleges, clubs, and private apartments. Major participated with etchings, drawings, conceptual works and photographs but didn’t get a solo show until 1989.

 

Joining the theatre group that became Squat theatre in New York, his wife left with their two daughters in 1976, never to return. Major, crushed, spent time in a sanatorium, was diagnosed and medicated – probably wrongly. For the following period he did not do his “own” work, instead from 1976 until the early 2000s he was a draughtsman of archeological finds for the Budapest History Museum, making up missing parts of broken sculptures and reliefs in his idiosyncratic way. As he grew increasingly isolated and introverted, he moved back with his family. His sister, Aniko, provided a comfortable studio in their home and took care of him.

 

As Major started to sketch again for himself from 1986 on, the influence of the time spent at the Budapest History Museum became obvious. Using the pretext of archeological reconstruction occasionally he drew his idiosyncratic topics as artifacts from some excavation. Among his new subjects were illustrated chess puzzles and studies of coincidence in perspective which he applied regularly to his drawings, occasionally making his own monument bearing his features to connect with female sculptures in the background. He didn’t stop at the cemetery, drawing from popular lore, his face was imprinted on all mistreated males in history.