Early Years

István Sándorfi, also known as Étienne Sandorfi, was a French/Hungarian naturalist painter. He received his formal art education at École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts and at École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris. He mastered what art critics now term hyperrealism, but he did so with his very own blend of surrealistic elements. He got introduced to oil painting at the age of 12, since then he dedicated much of his life to perfecting his painting techniques in order to achieve the photoreal and at the same time pull the carpet away under the viewer by letting part of a person disappear in thin air. He was reclusive, mostly working at night. He kept the contact with galleries and collectors to the bare minimum, only enough to make ends meet. In the beginnings he survived by making illustrations for advertisements and portrait commissions. 

About his Art

Although he had reached international acclaim by the 1970’s, he cracked the code after the 1980’s. Before then he did self portraits. But these were somewhat tormented and left gallery owners with an ambivalent feelling. On one hand they knew they were dealing with a great artist but on the other they had to accept displaying the works of someone with a very limited audience indeed. In the 1980’s he started to use more cold blues, greens and violets. This created a delicate but psychologically charged palette as contrasted with beige and orange. The artist applied a single strong source of semi-diffused grey daylight and reflective light: a simple arrangement to give the scenes documentary authenticity. By the late 1980’s the subject matters were increasingly women mixed in unusual poses with parts secluded or entirely missing.

Drapery and runny paint was used as illusionary cue points to his partially disappearing parts. This never had the character of mutilation of the figures. No rather, what we’re left with is a poetic take fleeting moment of us being a human beings. The pictures are riddles. The studio, the painting medium, and various props are deliberately fused together in compositions of beauty and melancholy. Along with depicting the human, it is almost as much paintings about painting in a way.

"I had seen the paintings of a young artist, Etienne Sandorfi, at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1973. We exhibited him two years later, in November 1975.
If only for the incredible photographic precision of his works, this young Hungarian could be called a hyperrealist. But his trompe-l’oeil are tricks: his lacerated faces hide subterfuge and pretense. Sandorfi is a master of fantastic illusionism.
We exhibited him only once. I don’t know, I cannot know if his painting would have survived on the forefront at this time of avant-garde. It was classical painting. Extraordinary, but classical. And our time was not about classicism. "

Pierre Nahon

Sándorfi's artworks are available at the kálmán Makláry Fine Arts.

2010, 2011 - Haughton Art Antiques London, Jane Kahan Gallery

2010 - Haughton International Fine Art & Antiques Dealers Show, Jane Kahan Gallery

2009, 2010 - Los Angeles Art Show, Jane Kahan Gallery

2008 - Haughton Art and Design Fair New York, Jane Kahan Gallery

2008 - Moscow World Fine Art Fair, Jane Kahan Gallery

2007 - Los Angeles Art Show, Jane Kahan Gallery

2006 - Erdész-Maklári Galéria, Budapest

2002 – Art Palm Beach, Jane Kahan Gallery

1999-2000 - Gallerihuset, Copenhagen – The International 20th Century Arts Fair New York, Jane Kahan Gallery

1999 - Galerie Tempera, Bruxselles

1997 – Seattle Art Fair, Jane Kahan Gallery

1994, 1997 - Jane Kahan Gallery, New York City – Art Miami, Jane Kahan Gallery

1993 - Galerie Guénéguaud, Paris - Galerie Mann, Paris

1991 - Galerie Prazan-Fitussi, Paris

1988 - Armory Show '88, Lavignes-Bastille Gallery, New York - Abbaye des Cordeliers,

1987 - Lavignes-Bastille Gallery, Los Angeles - Hôtel de Ville, Nancy

1986 - Galerie Lavignes-Bastille, Paris - Galerie de Bellecour, Lyon

1984 - FIAC, Galerie Isy Brachot, Paris

1982 - Amaury Taitinger Gallery, New York City

1981 - Galerie Isy Brachot, Basel

1979 - FIAC, Galerie Isy Brachot, Paris

1978, 1981, 1983 - Galerie Isy Brachot, Paris

1977, 1980 - Galerie Isy Brachot, Bruxelles

1976 - Bucholz Galerie, Munich

1975 - Galerie Beaubourg, Paris

1974 - Galerie Daniel Gervis, Paris

1973 - Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris

1970 - Galerie 3+2, Paris

1966 - Galerie des Jeunes, Paris • Galerie de la Barbière, Le Barroux