Memorial house for the painter of hope
The Pál C. Molnár Private Museum, a bridge between past and future
MúzeumCafé 43.
“For me painting means sensual pleasure. To live is only worthwhile as long as I can paint. I could paint for the next 100 years, but that will not happen. Life is short, while art is eternal.” Thus Pál C. Molnár described his relationship to the arts. It is this passion and attraction to beauty which the artist’s grandson and his wife are trying to present in their museum at 65 Ménesi Road in Budapest. Molnár worked for almost fifty years in his studio on the first floor of the villa there. The family has filled it with contemporary furniture, paintings, graphic art, family photos and countless mementos. Following his death in 1981, his daughter, Éva Csillag Pálné, felt that the family inheritance should not only be preserved but also displayed. Thus three years later the Pál C. Molnár Private Museum was founded, which at the time, in 1984, was – and would still be today – a great adventure. Currently Éva’s son, Péter Csillag, and his wife look after the inheritance and all the tasks involved with running a museum. In 2008 the museum was expanded with the apartment next to the studio, where earlier the artist’s daughter Magda had lived with her husband. In this new part, the Csillags staged 19 exhibitions in six years devoted to other great Hungarian artists who didn’t have their own museum or exhibition space. They began with Jenő Paizs Goebel, then Aba-Novák, Stróbl, Kisfaludy-Stróbl and Gyula Rudnay followed. Their largest exhibition, which closed recently, presented works by 52 artists (including Molnár) who had received scholarships to Rome between 1928 and the World War II. In the summer they filled all four rooms with Molnár’s paintings. In the autumn they aim to display material about the First World War using mementos of the Rome scholarship holders, as well as organise a conference.