Ilonka karasz biography of martin

She attended the Wiener Werkstatte-inspred Hungarian Royal Academy of Art and Crafts as a teen with her sister, noted designer Mariska Karasz, two of the first women to be admitted to the school.

Ilonka Karasz () was the first woman admitted to study at the Royal Academy of Arts and Crafts in her native Budapest, before migrating to New York.

Within two years she had co-founded the European-American artists collective Society of Modern Art, was teaching textile arts at the Modern Art School, and had been commissioned to design an advertising campaign for the Bonwit Teller department store. Through the Society of Modern Art collective's periodical The Modern Art Collector she published several of her designs, including theater posters, cover designs, and illustrations.

Karasz took inspiration from folk art, translated into Modernist styles that she applied to textiles, ceramics, furniture, silverware, wallpaper, toys, and more. She began entering her works in exhibitions in , winning prizes and recognition in Women's Wear and elsewhere, and gaining a reputation as a leading textile designer by Karasz's prolific career was often spurred by a desire to experiment with tools many avoided.

Her success in the textile world was partially due to her willingness to work with the difficult Jacquard loom, used for upholstery, which opened the doors to transportation commissions. Dupont-Rayon hired her to improve the feel of rayon in the s, revolutionizing the then-new fabric and helping foster its popularity in high fashion.

The '20s and 30s also saw her highest production of metalsmith work, including silverware, jewelry, and furniture. Inspired by the De Stijl movement, this work was often minimalist and planar, and in she was the only woman given an entire room for her designs in the American Designer's Gallery exhibition.

Ilonka Karasz ( - ) was a Hungarian-American designer and illustrator.

Interestingly, one of the "rooms" designed for the show was a nursery, considered the first nursery to be shown in a designer showcase; she followed the success of this work with lines of washable fabrics and convertible furniture, and rooms designed for children's intellectual development. An illustrator, she took commissions from various American periodicals and book publishers, and designed New Yorker covers throughout her career, beginning in Despite her prolific and often revolutionary work, Karasz is often overlooked in the canon of Modern American art.

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