My first portrait of Picasso, Rue la Boéthe, 1932

Brassaï (Gyula Halász) (1899 –1984) was born in Romania and was a Hungarian photographer, sculptor, writer and filmmaker. He was one of the numerous Hungarian artists who flourished in Paris between the two World Wars. When he was three, his family lived in Paris for a year, while his father taught at the Sorbonne. As a young man, Brassai studied painting and sculpture at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, and joined a cavalry regiment of the Austro-Hungarian army during the the First World War. In 1920, Brasai went to Berlin where he worked as a journalist for two Hungarian papers while studying at the Berlin-Charlottenburg Academy of Fine Arts. In 1924 he moved to Paris and while living among the gathering of young artists and intellectuals in the Montparnasse quarter, he took a job as a journalist. Brasai’s job and his love of the city led to photography and rapidly explored the city through this medium in which he was tutored by his fellow Hungarian André Kertész.