Istvan Szapudi-Laendler (1899–1945)

Laendler was born of a middle class family in Budapest where he enrolled in the College of Fine Arts in 1921. He was mainly influenced by the academic realism of Ede Balló and Gyula Rudna. He spent his summers in the family's property in Győrsövényháza, visiting the surrounding countryside in the Tóköz. From 1925 to 1927 he toured the great public museum collections of Europe studying the work of the artists of the Italian and German Renaissance. He had exhibitions in Pest in the National Salon in 1927 and in the Kunsthalle in 1928. More exhibitions followed and his reputation grew, particularly as a portrait painter. Although as a painter he was strictly apolitical, he was unguarded in his opposition to the fascist regime with his house open throughout the war to Jewish refugees. In January 1945, the artist and his sister, Erna, were taken by a paramilitary troop of the Pfeil kreuzler–the Nazi backed Hungarian Fascists in Miskolc–and shot near the village of Moson szen t mik lós.