Miklós Erdély (Budapest, 1928 – 1986)  is one of the most influential artists of the Hungarian neo-avant-garde art scene.

He began studying sculpture at the College of Fine Arts in Budapest in 1947, which he left to join the studio of Dezső Birman Bokros (1889 - 1965). From 1947 to 1951 he studied architecture at and graduated from the Technical University in Budapest.

First he worked as an architect and experimented with painting and graphic art, poems and short stories. Erdély got acquanted with Európai Iskola (Dezső Korniss), "surnaturalism" (László Lakner) and, Béla Kondor and Sándor Altorjai. His house in Buda became a place for art events and a meeting place for artists, such as Tamás Szentjóby and Gábor Altorjay.

Erdély became interested in happenings, Fluxus, film and conceptual art. His notable works include those in the medium of textual actions and photographic series. From the early seventies, Erdély started exploring the question of the original and the copy – the problematics of pictorial representation,  such as in the works Theses on the Theory of Repetition (1973) and Analyses for the Theory of identification (1974).

The INDIGO group (INterDIszciplináris Gondolkodás) arose in 1978, following his series of creative exercises in 1975 and 1976, organised with Dóra Maurer and György Galántai. It was an interdisciplinary experimental teaching studio. They organised exhibitions and group actions centred around an artistic medium or a concept, activity etc. In the late 1970s, Erdély began to employ indigo-paper in many of his works.