Nicholas Hornyansky was born in Budapest in 1896. He worked as a colour mixer in his father’s printing office while still a boy. Hornyansky studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest under Prof. Ballo and Prof. Pasteiner and began exhibiting in Antwerp and Brussels. After he graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, he did post graduate studies in Vienna, Munich, Antwerp and Paris. He then went to Belgium about 1919 (as an accomplished portrait painter) and was associated with the School of Hens where he worked with Franz Hens doing landscape painting. After spending nine years in Belgium he travelled to England where he painted the portraits of Lord Newton at London and of the Baroness Miriam Rothschild at Trink Castle. He then went to Paris where he studied simultaneous colour aquatint printmaking and etching.
He came to Canada in 1929 and settled in Toronto, where he first exhibited his figure paintings, and his “Ice-Man” received the attention of critics and artists alike. He exhibited regularly with and became a member of the Ontario Society of Artists and an Associate Member of the Royal Canadian Academy. He also belonged to the Canadian Society of Graphic Art and the Society of Canadian Painters, Etchers and Engravers. Hornyansky made major contributions to the advancement of printmaking in Canada and taught metal plate media at the Ontario College of Arts from 1945 to 1958. He exhibited widely in the United States and internationally and received numerous awards for his work.
Hornyansky’s works are held in collections including the Royal Ontario Museum, Tom Thomson Memorial (Owen Sound), Sarnia Art Gallery, the Archives and Collections Society, the National Gallery of Canada, the University of Guelph Gallery, the Musée Plantyn in Antwerp, the National Print Collection at the Library of Congress, the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe and the Pennsylvania Museum of Art in Philadelphia.
Source: "A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume II”, compiled by Colin S. MacDonald, Canadian Paperbacks Publishing Ltd, Ottawa, 1979
