Farkas Molnár (1987, Pécs – 1945, Budapest) was a Hungarian architect who studied at Bauhaus, painter, graphics artists and one of the leading members of international Modernism in the interbellum period.
He was expelled from the Technical University in Budapest due to his involvement in the Hungarian revolution in 1919. In 1921, he visited Italy with artists-friends Henrik Stefan and Hugo Johan and painted cityscapes in a Cubism-like manner. Molnár co-founded the Artists' Circle in Pécs. On their joint exhibition in 1921, he presented figurative works.
He studied at the Bauhaus in Weimar from 1921 to 1925 under Johannes Itten. Later, he worked in Walter Gropius's architecture office.
In 1924, he partnered with Georg Much and Marcell Breuer on the design of small flats. Together they demanded that the Bauhaus open a course in architecture.
He was a founder of the constructivist group KURI (constructive, utilitarian, rational, international) and the author of its manifesto. The KURI group (Farkas Molnár, Henrik Stefan, Andor Weiningerm Kurt Schmidt, and others) was founded in the Bauhaus by Molnár and his friends from Pécs in the spring of 1923. The KURI Manifesto, was published in 1923 in an issue of Út magazine, published in Novi Sad.
For the first exhibition of the Bauhaus School of Art and Design held in 1923 in Weimar, Molnár created the Red Cube. It was a project of a stand-alone family house, using a bold colour (red), and rigid lines, designed as the first square house produced by the universal KURI. Drawings of Molnár's buildings were published in the Hungarian avant-garde journal Ma in July 1923, the same time the Bauhaus exhibition opened in Weimar.
The artwork Man with a Building was created during Molnár's stay at the Bauhaus between 1923 and 1925. The features reminiscent of the Red Cube can be seen on the artwork, suggesting it was created in the period shortly after the Red Cube's reveal and gifted to Marie-Luise Betlheim no later than 1925.
The book Die Bühne im Bauhaus was published in 1925, co-authored by Farkas Molnár, Oskar Schlemmer and Laslo Móholy-Nágy.
Molnár returned to Hungary in 1925. He founded CIAM (Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne) at Gropius' suggestion.