BACKGROUND
Katalin (Kato) Braun, my paternal great aunt, created the oil and pastel pictures reproduced below after her university studies in art in Budapest, Hungary during the early 1900s. The images depict the city streets and environs of Budapest, likely from the 1920s. Katalin subsequently moved with her husband, poet and photographer Árpád Szélpál, to France, where they lived and worked until the 1980s. (My paternal grandmother, Kato's sister, Elizabeth, left Budapest in 1924 to join Gyula (Jules) Freund in the USA, where my father, Thomas, was born in 1926.) The location of the art Katalin produced during her years in France is in the possession of close friends of hers in Paris.
[01]
Katalin Braun Szélpál
Budapest
Oil, 29" x 29"
1920s
[02]
Katalin Braun Szélpál
Budapest
Oil, 42" x 24"
1920s
[03]
Katalin Braun Szélpál
Hungary
Oil, 33" x 35"
1920s
[04]
Katalin Braun Szélpál
Budapest
Oil, 27.5" x 23"
1920s
[05]
Katalin Braun Szélpál
Budapest
Pastel, 23" x 27"
1920s
[06]
Katalin Braun Szélpál
Budapest
Pastel, 23" x 19"
1920s
[07]
Katalin Braun Szélpál
Budapest
Pastel, 22" x 18"
1920s
[08]
Katalin Braun Szélpál
Budapest
Pastel, 28" x 20"
1920s
[09]
Katalin Braun Szélpál
Budapest
Pastel, 26" x 21"
1920s
[10]
Katalin Braun Szélpál
Hungary
Pastel, 15" x 21"
1920s
[11]
Katalin Braun Szélpál
Hungary
Pastel, 20" x 16"
1920s
[12]
Katalin Braun Szélpál
Budapest
Pastel, 26.5" x 20"
1920s
[13]
Katalin Braun Szélpál
Budapest
Pastel, 30" x 23"
1920s
[14]
Katalin Braun Szélpál
Budapest
Pastel (& Gouache?), 27.5" x 22"
1920s
[15]
Katalin Braun Szélpál
Budapest
Pastel, 24.5" x 21.5"
1920s
[16] *
Katalin Braun Szélpál
Hungary
Oil, 21" x 21"
1920s
[17] *
Katalin Braun Szélpál
Hungary
Pastel, 23" x 19"
1920s
[18] *
Katalin Braun Szélpál
Budapest
Pastel, 32" x 26"
1920s
[19] *
Katalin Braun Szélpál
Budapest
Pastel
1920s