Ideal and Reality: The First Golden Age of Hungarian Painting and the Roots of Croatian Modern Art

Klovićevi dvori Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts, and the 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 January 19th, 2025.

Pál Szinyei Merse, Skylark, 1882, Oil on canvas, 163 cm × 128 cm, Sign. lower left: Szinyei Merse Pál | 1882, Hungarian National Gallery

With a representative selection of around 80 masterpieces of Hungarian painting of the 19th century 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 are joined by Croatian artists of the second half of the 19th 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.

Mato Celestin Medović, Pelješac-Korčula Channel, arr. 1912, oil on canvas, 78 x 101 cm, sign. lower left corner: M C Medović, KALLAYcollection

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 the diversity 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 180th birth anniversary of great Hungarian artist Mihály Munkácsy.

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

 

Béla Iványi-Grünwald, Woman in White Dress / Woman on the Shore, 1897, Oil on canvas, 81 cm × 100 cm, Without Signature, Hungarian National Gallery

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, within which the similarities and peculiarities of Hungarian and Croatian painting will be revealed, together with their development at the time of Dualism, when art became the central area of ​​national integrity and Central European identity.

 

Ivan Tišov, Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, 1897, Oil on canvas, 128 x 300 cm, sign. lower left: IVAN TIŠOV, op. IV. Zagreb 1897, Greek Catholic Seminary in Zagreb