Pal Kelemen

Kelemen, a citizen of the United States, was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1894, and studied art-history at the universities of Budapest, Munich, and Paris. After four years as an officer in World War I, he continued his work, changing gradually from his original subject, "Impressionism before the Nineteenth Century," to the sources and various manifestations of early Christian art. He worked in the museums of Budapest, Vienna, Berlin, Florence, and London, and made research trips all over...See more

Kelemen, a citizen of the United States, was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1894, and studied art-history at the universities of Budapest, Munich, and Paris. After four years as an officer in World War I, he continued his work, changing gradually from his original subject, "Impressionism before the Nineteenth Century," to the sources and various manifestations of early Christian art. He worked in the museums of Budapest, Vienna, Berlin, Florence, and London, and made research trips all over Europe. He spent considerable time in Spain. His earlier publications were mostly in Hungarian--one of them an essay on sculpture, following an interview with Auguste Rodin in Meudon Val Fleury in 1911, when he was a young student at the Sorbonne. His marriage to an American in Florence, Italy led to his first to the United States. Here he realized the great artistic values of the pre-Columbian civilization, so meagerly treated from an esthetic standpoint. In 1932-33, guided by professor Alfred M. Tozzer at Harvard University, he aquired the anthropological background of his particular field. See less