George Buday was born in 1907 in Kolozsvár, Austria-Hungary (now Cluj-Napoca, Romania) where his art studies led to a teaching position in graphic art at the University of Szeged. Following the award of a travel scholarship, Buday settled in London in 1937 where he became a renowned book illustrator (for both his own publications and for many other authors), contributed designs to the Times Literary Supplement, and published a history of the Christmas card. He was elected a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers and a Fellow of the Society of Wood Engravers and also helped to establish the Hungarian Cultural Institute in London.
Printmaker George Buday was born in Kolozsvár, Austria-Hungary (now Cluj-Napoca, Romania) in 1907. While a schoolboy at Kolozsvár Calvinist College he took an interest in art through the use of pastels. In 1924, his family moved to Szeged, where his father, Árpád, an archaeologist, became a professor and head of department at the university. From 1926 Buday studied Law at Szeged University, where he became founder and president of Szeged Youth Art College from 1932–38. He always considered himself to be very socially conscious, wishing to improve the living conditions of the Hungarian poor. In 1928, he visited England for the first time to attend a Liverpool Christian student’s congress, and the country made such an impression on him, that he wished to return for his studies. However, he received the Prix de Rome in 1936 and instead travelled to Italy. There, he met Paul Vincze, later fellow émigré medallist and sculptor, with whom he remained close friends. Between 1931 and 1933, Buday designed several sets for plays at the Szeged National Theatre and contributed woodcuts to accompany folk ballads and Áron Tamási's well-loved Ábel books. His early designs were often inspired by Hungarian folk culture and influenced stylistically by the German expressionist group, Der Blaue Reiter.
Awarded a travel scholarship in 1937, Buday visited Italy and then England, where he remained for the rest of his life. He first lived in London where he was attached to the Hungarian Legation as the stipendiary of Szeged University and conducted research on the artistic and historical connections between England and Hungary. Less than a year after arriving in England he was elected Associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers and two of his woodcuts were selected for the 1939 Royal Academy Annual Exhibition. When the Second World War was declared, he volunteered for the British External Services as a studio manager in Hungarian-language counter-propaganda and was involved in the Foreign Internal Defence department at Woburn Park. He made a series of patriotic woodcuts themed on Britannia for the Times Literary Supplement in 1941. In the same year, he was stripped of his Hungarian nationality for co-signing a letter to the Times that was heavily critical of the Horthy government. After giving up his association with Szeged University, he rented a studio in Chelsea with Paul Vincze. He worked as a book illustrator and was the author of a series of Little Books published in 1937–56 including the Little Book of Hungarian Folk Tales (1943). During this time, he also took on individual commissions for book illustrations for best-selling works such as a deluxe edition of Shakespeare's Timon of Athens, J C Hennessy's The Siege of Elsinore, and Bill Naughton's Pony Boy.
Buday co-founded the Association of Free Hungarians in Great Britain and, postwar, helped to establish and became the first director of the Hungarian Cultural Institute in London in 1948. However, he was forced to resign as director in 1949 when the institute was closed as communism took over Hungary. His application for British citizenship in 1950 was then rejected over false allegations by MI5 of communist sympathies, based on his position as director of the mainly leftist Institute, during which time he had followed the dictates of Moscow. However, being stateless did not hinder him from continuing his artistic practice. In 1953 Buday was elected to the Royal Society of Painters-Etchers; he became a Fellow of the Society of Wood Engravers the following year. Based on his own extensive collection of Christmas cards, which he donated after his death to the Victoria & Albert Museum, he published The History of the Christmas Card and The Story of the Christmas Card (both publications having several editions dating from 1949 into the 1960s).
In 1956, stateless and devastated by the failed Hungarian Uprising, Buday suffered a severe nervous breakdown and spent the last 34 years of his life in Netherne Psychiatric Hospital in Coulsdon, Surrey. Here, he was offered a studio in the garden complete with a printing press and he continued to work as a printmaker. Among other projects, he was commissioned to illustrate the 1980 Folio Society edition of Darkness at Noon the novel by his old acquaintance, Arthur Koestler, the original proofs of which are now held in the British Museum. Buday died in Coulsdon in 1990. One of his last projects included 25 delicate wood engravings for the Hungarian poetry anthology In Quest of the Miracle Stag published posthumously by the University of Illinois Press in 1996. His artworks, books and Christmas cards are held in UK public collections, including the British Museum, and Imperial War Museum in London, and the Thomas Bewick Museum, Cherryburn, in northeast England (which also hold his press).
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [George Buday]
Publications related to [George Buday] in the Ben Uri Library