PHANTOM THREAD III – OLGA FIALKA IN THE WAKE OF ARTISTS’ WIVES

The third exhibition of our series, ‘Phantom Thread – Artist Wives,’ looks at the life of Olga Fialka, a key figure of the Ferenczy Family. Olga Fialka, the wife of Károly Ferenczy and the mother of Valér, Noémi and Béni Ferenczy, was herself an artist, but after her children were born, she subordinated her ambitions to supporting the creative careers of the other members of the family. At a very young age, Olga Fialka was already noted for her extraordinary draughtsmanship and the sincere interest with which she turned towards the subjects of her portraits. There is an immediacy to her characters, whether in her paintings or book illustrations, which were informed by the stylistic traits of her time, the 19th century. Though she earned
recognition mostly as a portraitist and illustrator, the drawings that have survived in the sketchbooks she used from an early age form a significant portion of her oeuvre. Along with the well-known paintings, the Ferenczy Museum Centre also holds several of Olga Fialka’s sketchbooks, in which genre and travel scenes attest to her interests and demonstrate most directly her life and ambitions.