The Painters' Colony is the living expression of the Baia Mare School of Painting, founded more than 120 years ago, in 1896, by the artist Simon Hollósy. Initially a summer painting school, in 1898, by the Decision of the Baia Mare City Hall of March 26th, the initiative was granted a permanent character. The municipality, represented at the time by the mayor Oliver Thurman, decided to build eight artist studios, one for each of the signatories of the letter to the Baia Mare City Council: Hollósy Simon, Károly Ferenczy, Béla Iványi Grünwald, János Thorma, István Réti, Oszkár Glatz, Csók István, Horthy Béla. The project was not completed immediately, as the ensemble was built in several stages and materialized in the buildings that today make up the heritage of the Painters' Colony in Baia Mare.

The Baia Mare artists' colony crystallized during the course of temporary summer colonies, held annually from 1896 to 1901, between April/May and September/October. Since 1898, these temporary colonies have been associated with the permanent individual colonies of many artists who have spent shorter or longer periods of their artistic biography in Baia Mare, thus decisively contributing to the establishment of a genuine permanent institutional structure, known as the “Painters' Colony”.