Margit Varga

American artist, art editor, gallerist

Margit Varga
Born	Margaret Varga^[1] (1908-05-05)May 5, 1908^[1] New York City, New York, U.S.^[1]
Died	April 8, 2005(2005-04-08) (aged 96) Naples, Collier County, Florida, U.S.
Education	National Academy of Design, Art Students League of New York
Occupation(s)	Artist, gallerist, art editor, art director, journalist
Spouse	Laszlo Kormendi

Margit Varga (1908–2005) was an American artist, gallerist, journalist, art director, and art editor.^[2]^[3] Her artwork has been described as "magical realism" and her work was known in the New York City-area and in Europe.^[4] Varga owned a Midtown art gallery for emerging artists in the 1930s. She was an art authority and served as a judge for art exhibitions in the 1930s and 1940s.^[5] For 40 years Varga worked for Time magazine.

Biography

Margit Varga was born on May 5, 1908, in the Upper East Side in New York City, to parents from Hungary.^[6]^[7]^[1] She studied art at the National Academy of Design; and at the Art Students League of New York, under Boardman Johnson and Robert Laurent.^[6]^[7]

She owned the Painters' and Sculptors' Gallery at 22 East 11th Street in Midtown in 1932.^[6]^[8]^[9] The gallery showed emerging artists for the next 3 years.^[7]^[9] Varga worked for 40 years as an art editor and art director of Time magazine, starting in 1936.^[10]^[4]

Varga died on April 8, 2005, in Naples, Florida.^[4] Her artwork can be found in museum collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,^[4] Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts,^[11] the Metropolitan Museum of Art,^[12] and Gilcrease Museum.^[13]

References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d "VARGA, Margaret (Margit)". American Women. 3. 1939.
^ Journal of the Archives of American Art. Vol. 28. Archives of American Art. 1988.
^ Varga, Margit. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. 2011-10-31. doi:10.1093/benz/9780199773787.article.b00188584. ISBN 978-0-19-977378-7.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d "Death Notices: Margit Varga, Naples, FL". The Naples Daily News. 2005-04-12. p. 18. Retrieved 2022-07-30.
^ "Art Authority on Survey Visit, Margit Varga Tells Impression Made by Coast Painters in East". The Los Angeles Times. 1940-08-06. p. 20. Retrieved 2022-07-31.
^ ^a ^b ^c Kirwin, Liza; McNaught, William; Brown, Robert F.; Karlstrom, Paul J.; Pacini, Marina (1988). "Regional Reports". Archives of American Art Journal. 28 (4): 34–40. doi:10.1086/aaa.28.4.1557619. ISSN 0003-9853. JSTOR 1557619. S2CID 222434640.
^ ^a ^b ^c "Margit Varga papers". Smithsonian Online Virtual Archives (SOVA), Archives of American Art. Retrieved 2022-07-30.
^ "Hungarian-American Art Seen". The New York Times. 1932-01-06. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2022-07-30.
^ ^a ^b "Artist Helps Others Arrive, Margit Varga Opens Gallery to Show Work of Little Known Artists". Arizona Daily Star. 1932-01-14. p. 15. Retrieved 2022-07-31.
^ Grant, Florence; Jordanova, Ludmilla (2020-11-12). Writing Visual Histories. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 135. ISBN 978-1-350-02346-8.
^ "Margit Varga, "Going Fishing " (1944)". PAFA - Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. 2014-12-28. Retrieved 2022-07-30.
^ "Main Street, Brewster, 1941". The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
^ "Waldo Peirce / by Margit Varga". Gilcrease Museum. Retrieved 2022-07-30.