Danube views
Hungarian art from Szentendre
10.10.15 - 28.03.16
In 1926, eight young Hungarians founded an artists’ colony in a small town on the Danube. This could be the beginning of a story in the course of which the small town of Szentendre – the Hungarian “City of Arts” – became the nucleus of modern art in Hungary.
Szentendre is idyllically situated on the right bank of the Danube, not far from Budapest. When the well-known Hungarian artists’ colony Nagybánya fell to Romania after the First World War, eight young painters found a new home here. Her landscape painting not only focused on the city, but also the Danube – and she pointed to Europe: the influence of contemporary European styles, especially Italian and French painting, is unmistakable.
For the first time in Germany, the exhibition presented a cross-section of this school of painting up to the 1960s. Works by artists such as Béla Ónódi, Ernö Jeges, Mária Modok and József Bartl were on display, some from the Hungarian private collection of János S. Nagy and some from the DZM collection. With Kamilla Szij, Ottó Vincze and Lajos Csontó, three current artists from Szentendre took a stand on the earlier works and transformed the exhibition into a total work of art with their installations.