From idea to exhibition
Károly Markó Snr. and his Circle at the Hungarian National Gallery
MúzeumCafé 24.
A few years ago the idea arose for an exhibition at the National Gallery of works by Károly Markó Snr. There were several dates which could justify the organisation of such an exhibition, including the approaching 220th anniversary of the artist’s birth, the 150th anniversary of his death, or his Mexican connection, meaning that works which reached the New World 150 years ago could be brought back to Hungary for the first time. Zoltán Dragon, a specialist in Markó’s works, and Gábor Bellák and myself of the National Gallery started to plan an exhibition. The most important preparatory move was to establish direct contact with the Museo Nacional de San Carlos in Mexico City, from where we hoped to borrow not only the artist’s four paintings but also works by those who followed Markó, who were brought up in his artistic approach and created Latin American landscape painting. Thus we had to abandon the idea of the context of European landscape painting, but with the four pictures we could borrow from Mexico a new exhibition was outlined. We brought together works held by major international museums which the Hungarian public had never seen and which reveal a lot about the artist, enriching his oeuvre with new perspectives. Besides the academic works from Mexico there are some pictures from the Thorvaldsen Museum illustrating the friendship between the Hungarian artist and the classicist sculptor. There are also three compositions from Barcelona providing additional information about the Mexican connection. We can associate with these those paintings held in Hungarian and foreign private collections which have recently come to attention, as well as the works of Markó’s children and followers.