Exhibition Ideal and Reality: The First Golden Age of Hungarian Painting and the Roots of Croatian Modern Art [October 23rd 2024 – March 2nd 2025]

Klovićevi dvori Gallery and the Museum of Fine Arts / Hungarian National Gallery from Budapest present a joint exhibition project entitled “Ideal and Reality: The First Golden Age of Hungarian Painting and the Roots of Croatian Modern Art.”

The exhibition is held on the occasion of the Hungarian presidency of the Council of the European Union. The exhibition will last from October 23rd, 2024, to March 2nd, 2025.

With a representative selection of around 80 masterpieces of 19^th-century Hungarian painting from the permanent collections of the most important museum institutions in Hungary (the Museum of Fine Arts and the Hungarian National Gallery), the exhibition will present the golden age of Hungarian painting and its broad stylistic and thematic aspects through the works of famous artists: Mihály Munkácsy, Pál Szinyei Merse, László Mednyánszky, Viktor Madarász, Gyula Benczúr, Bertalan Székely, Károly Lotz, László Paál, Lajos Deák-Ébner, and Tivadar Zemplényi.

With a representative selection of around 80 masterpieces of 19^th-century Hungarian painting from the permanent collections of the most important museum institutions in Hungary (the Museum of Fine Arts and the Hungarian National Gallery), the exhibition will present the golden age of Hungarian painting and its broad stylistic and thematic aspects through the works of famous artists: Mihály Munkácsy, Pál Szinyei Merse, László Mednyánszky, Viktor Madarász, Gyula Benczúr, Bertalan Székely, Károly Lotz, László Paál, Lajos Deák-Ébner, and Tivadar Zemplényi.

Hungarian artists will be joined by Croatian artists of the second half of the 19^th century (Antun Aron, Joso Bužan, Ivan Tišov, Nikola Mašić, Bela Csikos Sesia, Vlaho Bukovac, Mato Celestin Medović, Emanuel Vidović, Menci Clement Crnčić, Dragan Melkus, Oton Iveković) who laid the foundations for the development of modernism in Croatia.

The Hungarian and Croatian artists and their works testify to a unique period of cultural prosperity, when Vienna, Budapest, and even Zagreb became cultural capitals. Local tastes and themes came to life under European influences, creating a mixture of styles that are characteristic of the art of Central Europe.

Visitors will have the opportunity to get acquainted with monumental masterpieces from the most important Hungarian museum-gallery institutions that have exclusively left their premises for this occasion. It is a special honor for Klovićevi dvori Gallery to participate in the exhibition with which we commemorate the 180^th birth anniversary of great Hungarian artist Mihály Munkácsy.

Réka Krasznai from the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest and Petra Vugrinec, Ph.D., from the Klovićevi dvori Gallery are the exhibition’s authors. Iva Sudec Andreis is the curator.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

The exhibition will present seven thematic units – history and romanticism, mythology and Arcadia, Munkácsy and the tradition of realism, scenes of rural life, Pál Szinyei Merse and introduction to modernism, magnificent landscapes, and manifesto of beauty. It will reveal the similarities and peculiarities of Hungarian and Croatian painting and show their development during Dualism when art became the central area of ​​national integrity and Central European identity.