Career In Hungary, Ferenczy started painting in a naturalistic style, as he had been influenced by Jules Bastien-Lepage. Seeking more training, he took his young family with him to Munich in 1893, the art center of Central and Eastern Europe. They lived there until 1896. There he encountered Simon Hollósy, a Hungarian painter not much older than he, who ran free classes that were more open to new influences than those at the Munich Academy. Hollósy encouraged an appreciation of French painters and their techniques, including en plein air painting. Ferenczy met the young Hungarian artists István Réti and János Thorma in Hollosy's circle in Munich, and the men collaborated on their ideas. Returning to Hungary in 1896, Ferenczy joined Réti and Thorma at Nagybánya, and they persuaded Hollósy to bring his classes there. They founded an artists' colony in Nagybánya (today Baia Mare, Romania) where they taught and mentored many Hungarian artists. Even in the first years, Ferenczy had a studio in Budapest during the winter, which he maintained throughout his career. Ferenczy's first exhibit in 1903 in Budapest marked his entry into making a living as an artist. In 1906, the painter was offered a teaching position at the Hungarian Royal Drawing School, now the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. He returned to Nagybanya in summers to teach, and has been strongly associated with the colony. His studio paintings were most important to his art, and he painted a traditional array of genres: nudes, still lifes, the urban scenes of circus performers. By his own work and his teaching, Ferenczy is considered the "father of Hungarian impressionism and post-impressionism" and the "founder of modern Hungarian painting." In his later years, Ferenczy painted subjects ranging from portraits, to nudes, and Biblical scenes. In this period, "[t]he reconciliation of the abstract aesthetic ideal with sensual beauty became a central concern of his art." Ferenczy was highly productive, and he worked in a variety of materials and genres. In November 2011, a major retrospective exhibition opened for six months at the Hungarian National Gallery, featuring nearly 150 paintings and 80 prints and drawings, together with about 50 documents (photographs, letters, catalogues and books) related to his art and life. It was the first major exhibit of his work in nearly a century. The works were drawn from private holdings as well as public collections. Exhibits 2011, The Retrospective Exhibition of Károly