Marté Szirmay b. 1946

Marte Szirmay was born in Budapest, Hungary and arrived in New Zealand in 1957. She graduated with a DFA (Hons) Senior Scholar from the University of Auckland Elam School of Fine Arts in 1968 and Dip.Teach in 1970 from Auckland Secondary Teachers College. 

In 1971 and 1972 Marte was the Frances Hodgkin’s Fellow at the University of Otago, Dunedin and was awarded QEII Arts Council Grants in 1973, 1978 and again in 1982, the year during which she was the visiting Artist at the Johnson Atelier, Princeton, New Jersey, and the following year saw her at the Governors State University, Illinois, USA.

Since 1970, Marte has had numerous solo exhibitions within New Zealand and internationally she has participated in Group exhibitions in London, Budapest, Helsinki, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Sweden, Crete, Spain, and Australia. She is represented in private and public collections throughout the world.

Szirmay works mostly in series; a series is complete when the artist realises that she has begun to explore another direction. The new series grows organically from the old - her creative process is metamorphic. For her, sculpture is a means of ‘paying homage to the organic’. 

Her works vary considerably in size. She has created architectural sculpture, sculpture for city squares, wall reliefs and free-standing objects ranging from person-size to hand-size. Szirmay has been represented in ARTIS Gallery since 2012. Szirmay is also a founding member of the Medal Artists of New Zealand (MANZ). ARTIS hold an exhibition for this group every two years – the most recent being ‘Our Nature’ in March 2023.

Marte Szirmay’s Smirnoff Centennial sculpture (1969) is in Lumsden Green, Newmarket, Auckland.