It is not honourable to trade with God
Imre Pákh, businessman, “art buyer”
MúzeumCafé 10.
Imre Pákh calls himself a buyer, rather than a collector. He says that those who buy art do not take risks or discover anybody. However, one thing differentiates Imre Pákh from other purchasers of art objects – a passion for Mihály Munkácsy. Though he claims he discovers no one, he has an important mission – to draw attention to significant matters, to artists worth taking note of, whether they created in the past or are working today. It is hardly necessary to introduce Imre Pákh. Every museum goer could have come across him, albeit not personally. The Munkácsy paintings decorating his New York apartment have been seen by more than a million people. He owns the largest collection of Munkácsy’s paintings, but he only buys works which have already ‘passed the test’ and even those are examined by experts. Interestingly, there is no business consideration behind his Munkácsy passion. His goal is to find the artist’s works, since he estimates that half of the painter’s oeuvre is still unknown to the profession, mostly ‘hiding’ in American collections. His dream would be to hold the largest Munkácsy exhibition ever, so big that nothing would remain hidden. “Paintings totalling 125 were displayed at the prominent Munkácsy exhibition in the Hungarian National Gallery,” he says. “What I could imagine would have at least 300. That would surely mobilise researchers and it would be worth organising a big conference as well. With luck such a large event would result in a Munkácsy monograph on the scale of Professor Lajos Végvári’s work. That book has defined discourse about Munkácsy for the past 50 years. It’s time a new book was written.