Work attire - two self-portraits by Ernst Neumann, 1930 and 1931

 

1930.

1931.

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Ernst Neumann (7 May 1907, Budapest, Hungary - 19 March 1956, Vence, France), Canadian artist. When he was five years old, his family immigrated to Canada from Hungary and took up residence in Montréal. After high school, he attended both the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal and the Art Association of Montréal, at the latter studying with painter and engraver Edwin Holgate. He went on made a consistent living as an artist, producing work in several spheres, including portraiture. But the work he was most passionate about was depictions of the marginalized society - the poor and unemployed - during the Great Depression, engravings that would often be reproduced in Montréal's more left leaning newspapers and periodicals. In 1936, with his former École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal classmate, Goodridge Roberts, he opened the Roberts-Neumann School of Art; it was able to remain open for only three years. In 1956, funded by a fellowship grant, he travelled to Europe but, while visiting a fellow artist in France, he suffered a heart attack and died. He was only forty-eight.

Another self-portrait, 1930.