Imre Goth (1893-1982)

Painter, notably of portraits, and inventor, born in Szeged, Hungary, who studied at Budapest Academy of Fine Arts, then in the 1920s in Berlin. He became noted for fashionable portraits of film stars and among his patrons was Field Marshal Hermann Goering, the Nazi air chief. After a successful exhibition in Birmingham at the New Grafton Galleries, in 1935 Goth moved to England where through friendship with the Hungarian film director Alexander Korda he came to paint portraits used in productions staring Ralph Richardson, Michael Wilding, Ann Todd and Margaret Leighton. When later in life Goth's eyesight failed he returned to inventing. In Berlin he had designed parachutes and headlights for cars. In London he formed a company to market his inventions, which included a non-drip device for bottles. Exhibitions of his work were held in 1939 at the Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, and Russell-Cotes Museum & Art Gallery, Bournemouth; in 1948