Árpád Szenes was born May 6, 1897 in Budapest, Hungary.
Árpád Szenes grows up in a cosmopolitan environment surrounded by intellectuals, artists and musicians. He studied at the Free Academy of Budapest and exhibited for the first time in 1922 at the Marx Ernst Museum in the same city.
His first contact with Paris took place in 1925 during a long trip through Europe that started one year before. In 1928, at the Academie de la Grande Chaumière, he met Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, with whom he married two years later. Vieira and Árpád settle in the Villa des Camélias where they live with Pascin, Varèse, Kokoschka, Giacometti, Calder, Lipchitz among other artists.
In 1939, the couple moved to Portugal due to the threat of war. Árpád sees his request for Portuguese nationality refused, so in June, fleeing the war, they leave for Brazil. They lived in Rio de Janeiro until 1947, when they returned to Paris.
We recognize, in the poetic landscapes of Árpád Szenes, a desire to unite the invisible and the visible through the subtle chromatic choice that is characteristic in his work. Arpad had a predilection for drawing, especially for the portraits of Vieira that he drew all his life.
Árpád Szenes has held numerous important exhibitions, including his retrospective at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, organised by Jacques Lassaigne in 1974.