Lajos Ébneth was born in Szilágysomlyó on 13 May 1902.

In 1920 he entered the Budapest Academy of Fine Arts where he studied painting and sculpture, after which he attended the Academy in Munich, where he was the student of the symbolist Franz von Stuck. After short sojourns in Dresden and Berlin he moved to The Hague (Netherlands) in 1923. There he became close to artists working for the De Stijl movement. Like his fellow countryman Vilmos Huszár, by the mid-1920s he was making works in the Dutch Neoplasticist spirit. He was also a contributor to the journal i10 founded by Arthur Müller-Lehning (who also knew László Moholy-Nagy). His collaboration with Kurt Schwitters – who at the time published his review Merz with Theo Van Doesburg and El Lissitzky – brought him closer to the European Constructivist movement and boosted his international profile. He also stayed in Germany several times and, in November 1926, exhibited at Der Sturm alongside Schwitters. His contacts with the Bauhaus drew him towards graphics and photography, and he showed his work in these new media at the Film und Foto exhibition organised by the German Werkbund Stuttgart in 1929.

In the mid–1930s he began producing Expressionist figurative paintings, followed later by sculptures. After several solo exhibitions of his sculptures in the United States, he emigrated to Peru in 1949. In the 1950s his art once again became abstract. He died in Chaclacayo (near Lima) on 14 October 1982.