Muray, Nickolas

Nickolas Muray was born February 15, 1892, in Szeged, Hungary. He attended a graphic arts school in Budapest, where he studied lithography, photoengraving, and photography. After earning an International Engraver's Certificate, Muray took a three-year course in color photoengraving in Berlin, where, among other things, he learned to make color filters. At the end of his course he went to work for the publishing company Ullstein.

In 1913, with the threat of war in Europe, Muray sailed to New York City, and was able to find work immediately in Brooklyn as a color printer. He was soon working for Condé Nast as a photoengraver working with color separations and half-tone negatives.

By 1920, Muray had opened a portrait studio at his home in Greenwich Village, while still working at his union job as an engraver. In 1921 he received a commission from Harper's Bazaar to do a portrait of the Broadway actor Florence Reed; soon after he was having photographs published each month in Harper's Bazaar, and was able to give up his engraving job. Muray quickly became recognized as an important portrait photographer, and his subjects included most of the celebrities of New York City. In 1926, Vanity Fair sent Muray to London, Paris, and Berlin to photograph celebrities, and in 1929 hired him to photograph movie stars in Hollywood. He also did fashion and advertising work. Muray's images were published in many other publications, including Vogue, Ladies' Home Journal, and The New York Times .

When Muray signed a contract with Ladies' Home Journal in 1930 to produce color fashion photographs, he traveled to Germany to purchase the equipment to convert his studio into one of the first color labs in the United States. He became known as a master in the carbro color process.

In the early 1920s, Muray was introduced by Carl Van Vechten to Miguel Covarrubias, who had come to New York in 1923 on a scholarship from the Mexican government. Covarrubias drew caricatures for Vanity Fair (1924-36) and The New Yorker (1925-50), and was also a writer, and illustrated his own books and many books by other authors. Covarrubias studied and wrote about non-Western cultures, and also developed an interest in dance and museology. Muray and Covarrubias became friends and for a time shared lodgings on MacDougall Street, where they hosted parties on Wednesday nights. Among their guests were Martha Graham, Ruth St. Denis, Sinclair Lewis, Paul Robeson, and Carl Van Vechten.

Muray also became friends with some of the other Mexican artists who had found their way to New York City. Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) and her husband Diego Rivera (1886-1957) were close friends with Muray; indeed Kahlo and Muray were having an affair when Rivera filed for divorce in 1939. Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991) and his wife, Olga, were in Muray's circle in the 1940s and 1950s. Tamayo, an internationally-known painter, sculptor, and printmaker, was born in Oaxaca, and studied in Mexico City. After 1936 he lived part of the time in New York City, usually staying there in the winters, and then in Mexico City in the summers.

Muray also contributed reviews for Dance magazine. In 1927 he won the National Sabre Championship, and in 1928 and 1932 he was on the United States Olympic Team. During World War II, Muray was a flight lieutenant in the Civil Air Patrol. He died in 1965.

From the guide to the Nickolas Muray Collection of Mexican Art, 1925-1954, (Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin)