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Nickolas Muray was born February 15, 1892, in Szeged, Hungary. He attended a graphic
arts
school in Budapest, where he studied lithography, photoengraving, and photography.
After
earning an International Engraver's Certificate, Muray took a three-year course in
color
photoengraving in Berlin, where, among other things, he learned to make color filters.
At
the end of his course, he went to work for the publishing company Ullstein. |
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In 1913, with the threat of war in Europe, Muray sailed to New York City, and was
able to
find work immediately in Brooklyn as a color printer. He was soon working for Condé
Nast as
a photoengraver working with color separations and half-tone negatives. |
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By 1920, Muray had opened a portrait studio at his home in Greenwich Village, while
still
working at his union job as an engraver. In 1921, he received a commission from Harper's Bazaar to do a portrait of the Broadway actor Florence
Reed; soon after he was having photographs published each month in Harper's Bazaar, and was able to give up his engraving job. Muray
quickly became recognized as an important portrait photographer, and his subjects
included
most of the celebrities of New York City. In 1926, Vanity Fair sent Muray to London, Paris, and Berlin to photograph
celebrities, and in 1929 hired him to photograph movie stars in Hollywood. He also
did
fashion and advertising work. Muray's images were published in many other publications,
including Vogue, Ladies' Home Journal, and The New York Times. |
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When Muray signed a contract with Ladies' Home Journal in 1930 to
produce color fashion photographs, he traveled to Germany to purchase the equipment
to
convert his studio into one of the first color labs in the United States. He became
known as
a master in the carbro color process. |
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In the early 1920s, Muray was introduced by Carl Van Vechten to Miguel Covarrubias,
who had
come to New York in 1923 on a scholarship from the Mexican government. Covarrubias
drew
caricatures for Vanity Fair (1924-1936) and The New Yorker (1925-1950), and was also a writer, and illustrated
his own books and many books by other authors. Covarrubias studied and wrote about
non-Western cultures, and also developed an interest in dance and museology. Muray
and
Covarrubias became friends and for a time shared lodgings on MacDougall Street, where
they
hosted parties on Wednesday nights. Among their guests were Martha Graham, Ruth St.
Denis,
Sinclair Lewis, Paul Robeson, and Carl Van Vechten. |
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Muray also became friends with some of the other Mexican artists who had found their
way to
New York City. Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) and her husband Diego Rivera (1886-1957) were
close
friends with Muray; indeed Kahlo and Muray were having an affair when Rivera filed
for
divorce in 1939. Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991) and his wife, Olga, were in Muray's circle
in the
1940s and 1950s. Tamayo, an internationally-known painter, sculptor, and printmaker,
was
born in Oaxaca, and studied in Mexico City. After 1936 he lived part of the time in
New York
City, usually staying there in the winters, and then in Mexico City in the summers. |
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Muray also contributed reviews for Dance magazine. In 1927 he won
the National Sabre Championship, and in 1928 and 1932 he was on the United States
Olympic
Fencing Team. During World War II, Muray was a flight lieutenant in the U.S. Civil
Air
Patrol. He died in 1965. |