Emile Lahner

Who was Emile Lahner?

Emile Lahner was an Hungarian born painter who moved to Paris in 1924 and became part of the School of Paris, a group of international artists working in Paris between 1900 and 1940.

Lahner was born in 1893 in the village of Nagyberezna in the Carpathian Mountains of Hungary. Lahner's mother died in childbirth and he became an orphan at the age of seven when his father was killed in an accident. Placed in the care of a bishop guardian, he was sent to boarding school to begin training as an engineer. Lahner abandoned his engineering career in 1921 and enrolled in the School of Fine Arts in Budapest where he studied under the masters Janos Vaszary and Kochine, seminal figures in the Art Nouveau movement.

During World War I, neighboring Romania and the new Soviet Republic sacked much of Hungary. The subsequent "Red Terror" and "White Terror" ensued and thousands were either jailed or killed. In this harshly repressive atmosphere, many artists and intellectuals, including Lahner, were forced to flee their homeland or chose to emigrate. Lahner decided in 1924 to move to Paris where he could study the modern masters, Delacroix, Van Gogh and Monet.