Lajos Tihanyi (29 October 1885 – 11 June 1938) was a Hungarian painter and lithographer who achieved international renown working outside his country, primarily in Paris, France.

Born in Budapest, as a young man, Tihanyi was part of the "Neoimpressionists" or "Neos", and later the influential avant-garde group of painters called The Eight (A Nyolcak), founded in 1909 in Hungary.

Their work is considered highly influential in establishing modernism in Hungary to 1918, when the First World War and revolution overtook the country.

)[5] The writer and journalist Lajos Kassák founded A Tett (Action) in 1915, and later Ma (Today); these published articles on literature and art, and provided reproductions of some work.

[1] By the end of World War I, the leading art style in Hungary shifted to the radical movement of Activism, in which Tihanyi also participated.

[6] That year, after the fall of the Hungarian Democratic Republic and the failure of its revolution, Tihanyi and many artists and intellectuals left the country en masse.

Tihanyi worked and lived for the rest of his life abroad, first briefly in Vienna, then a few years in Berlin, which was flooded with radical artists and intellectuals from Eastern and Central Europe.

In addition to the Hungarians, by that time Russians, including the Ukrainian artist Archipenko, were arriving in Berlin; he quickly achieved more notice for his constructions than he had in Paris, and the first monograph was published on him in 1921.

Because of his reluctance to sell his paintings, in his early years abroad, he sometimes relied on some financial help from his father, who owned a coffee shop in Budapest.

[6] When Tihanyi's nephew Ervin Marton came to Paris in 1937, the painter introduced the younger man to many of his friends, bringing him within his circle.

He was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery, where the author Robert Desnos gave the valedictory, standing next to the politician Michael Karolyi, "a leading figure of the 1918 Revolution".

[1] Brassaï and Bölöni arranged for storage of art works by Hungarians in Paris during World War II, including many by Tihanyi.

Together with Kertész, Brassaï and de la Frégonnière in 1970 helped transfer much of Tihanyi's work to the Hungarian National Gallery, founded in 1957.

[1][12] With fellow painter Bertalan Pór, Tihanyi figures prominently as a fictionalized character in Cafe Europa: An Edna Ferber Mystery, by Ed Ifkovic, which deals with 1914 Budapest.