About Stephen Csoka

Stephen Csoka in his Budapest studio circa 1932

Stephen (Istvan) Csoka was born in Gárdony, Hungary on January 2, 1897 and died in New York in 1989. He is best remembered as a painter and etcher of portraits, nudes, landscapes, genre, and horses. Csoka studied at the Budapest Royal Academy of Art and his memberships include Associate of the National Academy of Design in New York City; the Society of American Etchers in Brooklyn, NY; the Society of Brooklyn Artists; and the Hungarian Etchers Association.

Csoka’s exhibitions and awards include a medal at the Barcelona International Exhibition in 1929; a prize at the City of Budapest Exhibit in 1930; prizes at the Society of American Etchers in 1942 and 1945; prizes at the Library of Congress in 1944 and 1946; a prize at the Society of Brooklyn Artists in 1944; a prize at the Philadelphia Watercolor Club in 1945; the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1945; the Carnegie Institute in 1943, 1944, and 1945; the Art Institute of Chicago in 1944; the Los Angeles Museum of Art in 1945; the National Academy of Design from 1940 through 1945; one-artist shows at the Contemporary Artists in 1940, 1943, and 1945; and the Minneapolis State Fair in 1943.

*Stephen continued to receive awards and exhibit his work throughout his life. In 1997, Hofstra Museum sponsored a Retrospective/Centennial exhibition in honor of his birth.

Collections representing Csoka’s work are the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; the British Museum, London, England; the Bezalel National Museum, Jerusalem, Israel; the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio; Whistler House Museum of Art, Lowell, MA; the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; the Sheldon Swope Art Museum, Terre Haute, IN; the Mobile Museum of Art, Mobile, AL; the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, MN; the Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, NM; the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary; Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest, Hungary, the Museum of the City of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary; the Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA; the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA; Hofstra Museum, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY; Holocaust Museum, Glen Cove, NY; National Academy of Art, New York, NY; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; New York Historical Society, New York, NY;New York Public Library, New York, NY; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Peabody Museum, Cambridge, MA; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Reading Public Museum, Reading, PA; Livingston Arts Center, Mount Morris, NY; Ball State Teachers College, Muncie, IN; City College, New York, NY; Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY; Hungarian Consulate, New York, NY; Hungarian Heritage, New Brunswick, NJ; Hunter College, New York, NY; IBM Collections; Princeton Print Club, Princeton, NJ; the Encyclopedia Britannica Collection; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY

References: Who Was Who in American Art, vol. I, page 141; Davenport’s Art Reference 2001/2002, page 474; Mallett’s, page 97; Whistler House Museum of Art files

In 1986, at the age of 89, Stephen won The William Cortland Mitchell Memorial Prize of $1,000 in the Dr. Maury Leibovitz Art Awards Program.

Unbeknown to Stephen, his son, Frank, entered a reproduction of his painting, Ft. Lauderdale