Constant Detré

Constant Detré (real name Szilárd Eduard Diettmann) was in Budapest on 2 January 1891, and died in Garnat-sur-Engièvre, a village of central France (département of Allier) on 10 April 1945. He was a painter who left his native Hungary for good in rather obscure circumstances following the repression against the Béla Kun government of 1919. He settled in Paris where he mixed from 1920 to 1940 with representatives of the School of Paris and other Montparnasse artists, several of whom were Central European émigrés like himself, such as Pascin, a good friend of his. After his marriage to a gifted French puppet designer, he became a French citizen shortly before World War II.

Detré's pastels (his favourite medium) show great virtuosity and originality. Subjects vary from trenchant social criticism to colorful landscapes, portraits, domestic and brothel scenes not unlike those of Toulouse-Lautrec whose influence he recognized. Yet he has his own way of treating his subject-matter, with ordinary everyday scenes, peopled with nonchalant, sometimes withdrawn, but always vibrant characters. Occasionally he paints himself as a voyeur gazing from within the canvas at his unsuspecting models, so that we feel drawn into his world as if we were his accomplices. His work is rarely found in auction houses and even less so in museums. In the 1960s, a number of works were auctioned off by the artist's family and his only daughter so that we can rest assured that specimens of his production continue to delight private collectors, in Europe and possibly elsewhere.^{[citation needed]}

External links

• Original version, in both French and English, revised by the artist's daughter : www.cdetre.com [1]

Persondata
Name	Detre, Constant
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1891
Place of birth
Date of death	1945
Place of death