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Ilona Keserü Ilona
Ilona Keserü (born 29 November 1933, Pécs, Hungary) is a Kossuth Prize winner Hungarian painter, professor emerita.

Life and career
Ilona Keserü was born in Pécs, Hungary in 1933. She studied at the Lyceum of Fine Arts (Pécs) between 1946 and 1950, then at the Secondary School of Visual Arts (Budapest) between 1950 and 1952. She was accepted to the College of Fine Arts in 1952, where, after completing the painting and mural courses, she graduated in 1958. During the first three years at the College her master had been László Bencze, followed by István Szőnyi. However, Keserü considers Ferenc Martyn as her real master, who had been overseeing her professional development from as early as 1945.

From 1960 she worked for the Belles-lettres and the Ferenc Móra Publishing Houses as an illustrator. In 1962 she received a scholarship from the Italian government and followed the courses of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome for a year. There she had her first show at the Galleria Bars in 1963. She then returned to Hungary and dedicated herself to designing sets and costumes for performances at the National Theatre, the Katona József Theatre, the Opera House, and the Ódry Stage in Budapest, the Gergely Csíky Theatre in Kaposvár, the Katona József Theatre in Kecskemét and the Hungarian Theatre in Targu Mures (Romania).

Keserü showed her first abstract paintings at the Jókai Klub in Budapest in 1964, then regularly thereafter in Budapest and various Hungarian cities. In 1972 she exhibited in Czechoslovakia, then, in the summer of 1974 she painted a mural in Vence (France). She also worked on a mural for the new Sports Palace in Budapest in 1979. From 1963 onwards she has taken part in numerous group-shows throughout the world.

Keserü taught drawing and painting at the University in Pécs from 1983 to 2003 (from 1991 as professor). From 2003 to 2008, as professor emerita, she organized short painting courses and exhibitions for Doctorate students entitled Színerő (Colour Force), a platform for creating and presenting works of large scale at the unused great halls of the Zsolnay Factory in Pécs. She is one of the founders of the Master School of Fine Arts in Pécs. She also gave lectures at universities abroad as a guest professor: at the École des Beaux Arts (Cergy-Pontoise, France) in 1985, and at the University of Hertfordshire (UK) in 1998. Throughout her life, Keserü took part in study trips to various countries from Poland to the US.

Keserü received the Mihály Munkácsy Prize in 1984, became an Artist of Merit in 1989, and was awarded the Cross Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic in 1996. She became a member of the Széchenyi Academy of Literature and Arts in 1993. In 2000 she was awarded the Kossuth Prize and in 2014 the Artist of the Nation Prize.