Endre Röder was born in Budapest in 1933. Between the age of two and fourteen, he lived on the Mediterranean island of Malta.
Since 1949 he has resided in England. After completing his secondary education at St John’s College in Portsmouth he completed his National Service in the army, serving in Egypt and Cyprus. In 1954 he trained as a cartographical draughtsman with the Ordnance Survey, and in 1955 studied architecture, abandoning this to become an art student and qualifying in 1960.
He taught art in secondary schools, polytechnics and colleges of further education before being appointed Education Services Curator with Sheffield City Art Galleries. He left this position in 1974 to lecture in art history at Bretton Hall (South Yorkshire) where he taught up to post-graduate level. Since 1988 he worked as a full-time painter.
Now in his mid 80s, Endre Röder is still producing work of sheer delight. Many of his paintings shimmer with dabs of colour, lighting up the canvas. Other works, rich in tone, are more subtle. They almost saturate the composition with blocks of colour, producing a soft beauty reminiscent of Gauguin. Influencers abound – Chagall, Balthus, Picasso and Modigliani with his use of strongly defining lines, particularly around the face of his models. It is a recurring theme in Röder’s work that evokes fun and movement. Images from other artists frequently kick-start ideas which in turn motivate his sense of colour and design, culminating in work that is distinctly his own. Occasionally he uses the trick of chiaroscuro (light against dark) to illuminate an image, it’s use brought to perfection by Dutch artists of the Golden Age who also, occasionally like Röder, filled their paintings with symbolic meaning.
Looking at these paintings it becomes perfectly obvious that the artist is captivated by women, and they appear in almost of all his compositions. He treats them with respect and deep sensuality and often places them in imaginative settings. But his women are strong – no shrinking violets here. They all look ready to take on the world. So – enigmatic, faintly surreal, thought-provoking and quite beautiful, Endre Röder’s work is also stunning.