Wagner János received his diploma from the Hungarian Collage of Fine Arts in 1962. He was the student of Fónyi Géza, Szőnyi István and Domanovszky Endre. From 1977 until 1983 he taught at the School of Window Dressing, in 1983-96 at the Secondary School of Fine- and Applied Arts. He did field trips to several countries among them to Vietnam. He is the member of the board of the Association of Fine- and Applied Artists, the co-president of the Association of Hungarian German Artists, and member of the Society of Hungarian Aquarelle Painters.

Prices: 1968-71: Derkovits Scholarship; 1981: the price of the Italian Tourist Office, 1983: Petőfi Application I. Price, Kiskőrös; 1993: Salgótarján Autumn Display, Readers' Price; the International Minority Office's Price, 1996: Portugal Scholarship, Lisbon, 1997: the Price of the Association of Hungarian Painters; 1999: the Price of the Association of Hungarian Paper Artists , 2000: a Roman Hungarian Academy’s Scholarship, 2004: Munkácsy Mihály Price.

"What we have to tell about the art of Wagner János is that his paintings are known for three decades and a half. The oeuvre that started in 1965 began with evoking reality, just like many other did, and blossomed in the branch of abstraction and non-figuration that is now called lyric archaism. The artists working in this spirit refered back to the past keeping the traditional form and dimension of picture. The artist recalls an intimate, confession-like worlds.

The new works of Wagner János can be connected to tradition despite of the fact its liveliness and complicated structure. It is a place where the thought of Goethe is valid: The deeds of the colors and light, the deeds and sufferings."

(Wehner Tibor)