Americo Makk - Biography

Americo Makk is an internationally acclaimed master painter and portrait artist of two United States Presidents. Over the past five decades, the importance of Americo Makk’s work has been recognized with numerous awards and honors, including American Ecclesiastic Award, European Banner of the Arts, Oscar d’Italia, Alfred Nobel Medal for Peace (Einstein International Academy Foundation) and Outstanding Achievement Award for Western Paintings (American Biographical Institute).

Paintings by Americo Makk - powerful scenes of city life, character studies, historical and western paintings - have been the focus of numerous major public exhibitions, including Carnegie International Center (NY), U.S. Senate Rotunda (Washington, D.C.), Monaco Intercontinental Exhibition (Paris), St. Stephen Museum (Hungary), and many other museums and galleries in the United States, Canada, Europe, South America, and Japan.

Regarded as one of the world’s most respected portrait artists, Americo Makk was selected to paint portraits for the U.S. White House of President Ronald Reagan in 1984 and President Jimmy Carter in 1979. He has also painted a portrait of Cardinal Mindszenty for the Vatican and many celebrities including Eva Gabor, Barbara Carrera and Ray Price.

Americo Makk’s wife, Eva, and their son, A.B., are also accomplished painters whose works are exhibited and collected internationally, giving rise to the Makks’ reputation as “the first family of the art world”.

Americo Makk has been called a "modern-day Michelangelo". Working together with Eva Makk since 1950, he has painted large murals in sixteen cathedrals and churches on two continents. This feat is unequaled by any other artist in our time, giving the Makks a place forever in art history. Their most famous work, on the ceiling of the 150 year old Manaus Cathedral in Brazil, is the world’s largest single-themed ceiling mural.

Americo was born in Hungary in 1927. His formal training began at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Art in Budapest. At the top of his class, he received a scholarship to Italy, and while studying at the Academy of Fine Art in Rome he met his future wife, Eva, a fellow artist at the academy. The couple moved to Brazil in 1949, and their reputation as brilliant young painters spread quickly. They were appointed as Professors of Art at the Sao Paulo Academy of Fine Art, and later were named Official Artists of the Brazilian Government. Among their many commissions was an unprecedented expedition deep into the Amazon rain forest to paint the indigenous tribal people. In 1962 Americo Makk and his family moved to New York and continued their distinguished careers as artists. Americo Makk now lives in Hawaii, where he and his family have made their home since 1967.

Today Americo Makk’s paintings are highly prized, with some selling for several hundred thousand dollars. Demand for his work is still growing. As he has done for more than fifty years, Americo Makk continues to receive international acclaim, such as a recently opened permanent exhibition of his paintings at the Museum of Hungarian Military History in Budapest.