The art collection created by Peter and Irene Ludwig provides the core collection of Ludwig Museums worldwide, and without doubt its most well-known and most popular section is the one representing the period of pop art.

In some respect it is a unique collection as it includes iconic works by emblematic pop art artists (Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, etc.) as well as works by less-known (Howard Kanowitz, Allan D’Arcangelo etc.) and by European artists who represent the pop art tendency outside America (Peter Blake, Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, Martial Raysse, Mimmo Rotella).

As it is clearly revealed in the exhibition, the chief attraction of pop art lies in the fact that – in contrast with abstraction that keeps a certain distance between the viewer and the artwork – it introduced a new method of figurative depiction into the art of the given period which, due to its everyday references, was familiar and easily comprehensible for the public.

However, at the same time, paradoxically, these artworks give the very critic of consumer society by transplanting the mechanism of everyday consumerism into art, thus offering the artworks for consumption to the receiver. It also applies to depictions that from the very first moment rather critically approach subjects like Vietnam War or question of mass media.

This exhibition is organised in cooperation with other Ludwig Museums and prior to Budapest it is shown in Cologne and in Vienna. In Budapest the exhibition material is enriched with artworks by Hungarian and Eastern European pop art artists.

On until 31 January 2016.

Source: Ludwig Museum