“Not only did we try to displace reality; reality was no longer in the object. Reality was in the painting.” Pablo Picasso

How did Bánszky flee to Paris? Find out!

In 1913, a military court charged him with bribery, and after two nights of interrogation, Bánszky was released; he decided it would be wiser to flee: without any luggage, he immediately took a train to Paris. He wrote the following about his running away abroad: “I do not wish to be a cosmopolitan, but what am I to do if I am driven from my homeland for no reason? […] I am deprived of the hope of ever seeing my homeland again, and for the time being I am, so to speak, a fugitive among fugitives, even though I have given no cause for this.”

In the end, despite his best efforts, he was unable to get the charges dropped, and Bánszky never returned to his homeland. When World War I broke out, the sculptor – who, as a Hungarian, was viewed as a representative of the side opposing France – was deported to Villefranche-de-Rouergue in southern France. It was a blessing in disguise that the locals provided him with a studio and commissions there, until he fell victim to the devastating Spanish flu in 1918.