Professor Lajos Matolcsy was a prolific fine artist and father who survived incredible odds in war torn Europe. Separated from his family in the early 1940s - fleeing certain execution by the Nazis for fighting in the fierce Hungarian resistance - he dedicated the remainder of his life to sharing his art with the world, first and foremost through teaching.

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His influence on the visual arts and artists in the Maine, the Oxford Hills, and especially through the Western Maine Art Group, established a vibrant arts community in the center of a 1960s rural-industrial mill town.  This vibrant arts community endures today more than 40 years after his death, and has flourished into a veritable Mecca for artists all over New England to show in a variety of galleries that were born from his founding efforts.