Imre Ámos was born in 1907 in Nagykálló, Hungary, and died in 1944 in a forced-labour camp during the Second World War. He came to the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in 1929 after completing earlier studies at the Technical University. Ámos was a versatile and introspective talent whose interests extended beyond painting to include music and poetry. In the early 1930s, he changed his surname from Ungár to Ámos, a reference to the biblical prophet, reflecting his growing awareness of identity and the symbolic themes that would become central to his work.

In 1935, Ámos married the painter Margit Anna, and their close artistic and personal partnership is memorialised in many of his poems and paintings. At the invitation of Lajos Vaj...