Beregi Sámuel

Sámuel Beregi was born in Mukachevo in 1876. He studied at the Mukachevo Jewish Gymnasium, Budapest School of Model Drawing and Munich's "free" school of Simon Hollósy. After graduation, his paintings were exhibited for some time in the studio of Lajos Bruck, as well as in the art gallery in Budapest.

Sámuel knew various techniques of fine art: oil painting, graphics, watercolour. Most often ones can see his portraits and genre compositions, not so often - still lifes and landscapes. According to the style of performance, the artist's work can be conditionally divided into two areas: salon art and social painting. Salon art of the master is characterized by the careful detail of images, sentimentality, descriptive sweetness and pomposity. The heroes of these paintings are aristocrats, counts, crowned persons who spend time reading books, letters or playing chess. And all this is depicted in the Baroque, rich and lush interiors of the palaces. The paintings are executed in gold and purple-red colour tones. Obviously, the works of this genre were very popular and were bought by the average middle-class inhabitant. On the other hand, there are images of ordinary people from a poor stratum of society and various ethnic groups of Transcarpathia, which are portraits, life and friendly caricatures. The artist also covered the theme of the everyday life of the Jewish community of the region.

Adalbert Erdeli in his diary wrote about the artist the following: "Sámuel Beregi –  a man with a big heart, a man-artist, devoted to beauty. He is witty, unable to offend anybody in a company. He was a straightforward person, very kind. Life forced him to paint portraits of dead grandparents, and his vision was very fresh and picturesque, which proved full of life figures painted by him in Munich, which, however, will never be seen by the public and, perhaps, I was the only one who saw these works in Munich. He painted them for the magnificent interiors of the Schleissheim estate. To judge his creativity, considering just his remarkable witty caricatures and female portraits, would be wrong. Sámuel was a magic artist".

There is no exact date of the artist's death, but it is certain that he disappeared during the Holocaust: in 1941, about 15,000 Transcarpathian Jews were killed, and in 1944, the number of human victims of the regime was about one hundred thousand. The latest information about the artist is given to us by his close friend – an artist and teacher Istvan Kutlan from Fanchykovo village, Vynohradiv district of Transcarpathia. Istvan recalls that he came to Mukachevo to visit Beregi. And when he approached his friend's house, he noticed the yellow Star of David on the facade, the same star was on the artist’s jacket. Gendarmes stood nearby. That time the artists met for the last time. Soon a well-known and respected portrait painter was deported to the ghetto.

The works of the artist, namely, "Portrait of the Writer Urael Meteor" (1907) and "Portrait of the Artist Munkacsy" (1909), are kept in the Transcarpathian Regional Museum named after Y. Bokshai in Uzhhorod.

Oleksandr Nikitchuk