His artistic studies began at the technical drawing school in Budapest, followed by courses at the School of Decorative Art and later at the Royal Academy in Munich. He also spent time at the private school sponsored by Simon Hollósy, where, encouraged by Béla Czóbel and Vilmos Perlrott Csaba, he came to Baia Mare at the age of 26, traveling and studying in Paris.
Ziffer Sándor visited Baia Mare annually between 1906 and 1914, studying, living, creating, and exhibiting independently at the Painters’ Colony. During these years, the artist moved dynamically between Baia Mare, Paris, Budapest, and Munich, following the rhythm set by the Hollósy School model, structured on spring/summer seasons in the Baia Mare environment and autumn/winter seasons in metropolitan areas.
His first study trip to France in the Breton village of Moelan (now Moëlan-sur-Mer), near Pont-Aven, in the autumn/spring season of 1906-1907, allowed him to connect with the avantgarde circle mentored by the famous Henri Matisse, a decisive factor in Ziffer’s stylistic orientation towards post-impressionist and fauvist aesthetic expressions. In 1906, he participated in the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, and then, in 1910 and 1911, he returned for several years to work and exhibit in the French capital. In the autumn of 1918, he returned to Baia Mare, where he remained until the end of his life.
The painter depicts the rich vegetation of Baia Mare in his work, where the elements of the composition depicting a meadow stand out strongly: from the symbolic hills often found inthe compositions of Baia Mare artists, to the sky with its voluminous clouds, to the green of the natural vegetation. The main point of interest is formed by the anthropomorphic motif as small
accents of white in the sea of green.
ZIFFER SÁNDOR
