László Báron

László Báron was born on 22nd April 1931, in Kecskemét, Hungary. He went to primary school in his home town, after that he continued his studies at the Vocational School of Wood Industry in Budapest. It was much later that he matriculated at the Teachers’ Training College in Eger, where he took his degree at the Department of Drawing in 1971. Even before graduating from college he had been involved in artistic education at the Remsey family, in Gödöllo, and continued his studies at the Free School of Art run by Kálmán Mátis in Kecskemét.

As one of the committed and enthusiastic organizer of the art world in Kecskemét, in co-operation with the Artists’ Colony of Kecskemét, it was he who established the Artists’ Club in 1962. The Club was the venue of exhibitions, Lajos Kassák, among others, presented his works of art here. Although Báron was involved in several artistic activities in his home town, from 1957 for about three decades his main passion was puppetry: making puppets, playing puppets and directing puppet shows. He is the founder of the Ciróka Puppet Ensemble, and for a long time he had been also its art director. He was among the very first directors who used actors and puppets together at the same time on the stage.

As one of the earliest and most significant representatives of contemporary Hungarian enamel art, as early as 1962 he was experimenting at the Kecskemét Factory of the Lampart Enamel Works. In the beginning he re-created, in other words translated his graphic figures into enamel art, later he was experimenting with various materials, and researched the opportunities of using enamel in sculpture. After a short break, from 1978 he started working with enamel again, within the framework of the International Enamel Art Creative Workshop. Besides the painted enamel panel pictures it was about this time that he started to combine enamel (painted enamel and plique-á-jour technique of enamel) with sculpture made of wood. With his works of art on the one hand he joined the mythological trend of the Kecskemét colony, the artists taking upon themselves archaic traditions, on the other hand he was influenced by his own character being a puppet artist; the latter statement, in fact, applies to his paintings and graphical works as well.

His activities as a pedagogue of art is most significant, the main scene of these activities was the Kindergarten Teachers’ Training College in Kecskemét, where he served as an assistant professor from 1971 to 1992.