Writer, painter, theorist, designer and collage artist, Hungarian born, Kassak moved to Budapest with his family in 1904. In 1908, he began writing stories and poems. Between 1909 and 1910, he travelled throughout Western Europe and spent some time in Paris, where he came into contact with modern art and the anarchist ideas of the period. He produced his first ink drawings in 1916. At this time, he joined the Hungarian activists against tradition who believed in the collective force of artistic activity. Following the spirit of the De Stijl movement, Kassak experimented with plastic forms, using geometrical blocks similar to those of George Vantongerloo. He continued to concentrate on graphic design and, in 1922, began making collages, initially being strongly influenced by Dadaism. Between 1949 and 1956, he was forced to leave Budapest for political reasons and returned to the Fine Arts. In 1957, he was honoured by a retrospective exhibition at the Csok Gallery in Budapest and another, in 1961, at the Denise René Gallery in Paris. In 1965, he received the Kosuth prize and, in 1966, he took part in the Dada exhibition at the Zurich Museum of Art. Kassak's Constructivist images have much in common with Russian and Dutch Abstractionism.
