The Károly Ferenczy retrospective exhibition at the Hungarian National Gallery
MúzeumCafé 26.
The latest in the National Galle-ry’s series of retrospectives presenting outstanding 20th-century artists features Károly Ferenczy. The exhibition presents about 150 paintings and 80 drawings by Ferenczy, as well as numerous photographs, letters, catalogues and books. After a review of Hungarian and foreign collections (both public and private) works of art have been lent by a dozen museums for the exhibition, with the selection being complemented by more than 60items from private collections. First-class works have come from the Antal-Lusztig Collection, the Kogart Collection and the Polgár Collection, as well as from the former collection of József Lukács, the banker renowned as a collector of Hungarian avant-garde, which is extra special in terms of Frenczy’s oeuvre. A seascape is on loan from London as is the oil painting Before Bathing from the Salgo Trust for Education in America. In preparation for the exhibition numerous paintings were restored in the National Gallery’s workshop and these, now free from a century’s worth of dirt, have at last regained their original, intensive colours. For the occasion one of the artist’s early masterpieces, the 1894 oil painting Adam, has been restored with the support of a sponsor. The exhibition does not follow the chro-nological order of the works, nor does it primarily concentrate on the stylistic periods in the artist’s life. Rather the display highlights his painterly motifs, divided into eight major thematic groups, and within those into more refined sub-groups. The eight categories are/these include: Self-portraiture, Genre Pictures, Landscape and People – Nagybánya, Portraits, The World of the Studio, Biblical Compositions, Family and Creative Process.