His artistic studies began at the School of Technical drawing in Budapest, then attended the School of Decorative Art and later at the Royal Academy in Munich. He also spent a period at the private school sponsored by Hollósy Simon, where he was encouraged by Czóbel Béla and Perlrott Csaba Vilmos, who came to Baia Mare at the age of 26, traveling and studying in Paris. Ziffer Sándor comes annually to Baia Mare between 1906 and 1914, when he studies, lives, creates and exhibits as an independent artist in the Colony of Painters. During these years, the artist moves with a lot of dynamism between Baia Mare, Paris, Munich and Budapest according to the rhythm given by the model of Hollósy School, structured on the spring/summer seasons in the Baia Mare environment and the autumn/winter seasons in the metropolitan environments.
The first study trip to France in the Breton village of Moelan (now Moëlan-sur-Mer), near Pont-Aven in the autumn/spring 1906-1907 season, gave him the opportunity to connect to the avant-garde circle mentored by the famous Henri Matisse, a decisive fact in Ziffer’s stylistic orientation toward the aesthetic models of postimpressionist and fovist expression. In 1906 he attended the Salon des Indépendants in Paris, and then in 1910 and 1911 he would return for several years in a row 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.
On the Morii channel, the small tributary of the Săsar river, in the vicinity of the old mill of the city, currently Minerilor street and also the residence of the master, offers an apparently daily view, from the year 1959.
