Carl Laszlo

Kassák Kompozició

Carl Laszlo was born in Pécs in 1923. He completed his secondary education at the Cistercian Secondary Grammar School and then went to the Medical Faculty of the University of Pécs. Due to his deportation to Auschwitz, his education was interrupted in 1944. After having experienced several concentration camps, he was freed in Theresienstadt during the last days of the war.

In 1945 he moved to Basel where he continued his medical studies and later, in Zurich, became Lipót Szondi’s student. Apart from his interest in psychology, also confirmed by his membership of the Psychoanalytical Society since the fifties, he became interested in different artistic tendencies, wrote plays, formed his own theatrical society and, on the advice of his friends, he started trading with works of art.  He laid the foundations of his later art collection during this period. He published books and journals, including “Panderma” and “Radar” and the document collection entitled “No future” in 1982. With Bazon Brock he organised an exhibition in Hamburg under the title Ausstellung von Nichts (Exhibition about nothing). He was in contact with several well-known members of the hippie movement.

Mattis-Teutsch Lélekvirág

Carl Laszlo had a personal acquaintanceship with many artists of the twentieth century: William Burroughs, Jean Cocteau, Christo, Allan Ginsberg, Patricia Highsmith, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol, and Hungarian artists Lajos Kassák, György Ligeti, Károly Tamkó Sirató, Victor Vasarely are just a few names of the many. Numerous documentaries have been made and books have been written about Carl Laszlo’s life and collection.

His autobiography was published with the title “Az út Auschwitz felé – tóparti nyaralás” (The Road towards Auschwitz – Lakeside Holiday).