A First in Hungary: Museum Of Fine Arts Budapest Showcases Hungarian-Born US Photographers

  • 30 Jul 2024 7:30 AM
  • Hungary Matters
A First in Hungary: Museum Of Fine Arts Budapest Showcases Hungarian-Born US Photographers
On display until 25 August. Works by Hungarian photographers who became famous in the United States will be on display in Budapest’s Museum of Fine Arts.

Some 170 photographs by André Kertész, László Moholy-Nagy, Robert Capa and Martin Munkácsi and others have been selected for the exhibition organised in cooperation with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

“This will be the first comprehensive exhibition of US-Hungarian photographers,” Laszlo Baan, the head of the museum, told journalists viewing the show.

Baan added that the photographs have been borrowed from 17 collections in the US, primarily from the Virginia museum.

The pictures by the 32 photographers exhibited were taken in the period between the outbreak of the first world war and 1989, in Hungary, Berlin, Paris and the US.

More about the exhibition from Museum of Fine Arts:

The new exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts is the first comprehensive presentation of the work of Hungarian émigré photographers in America.

Realised in conjunction with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the large-scale exhibition featuring more than 30 photographers, including André Kertész, László Moholy-Nagy, Martin Munkácsi and Robert Capa, seeks to present the extraordinarily rich Hungarian-American photographic legacy through the works of world-renowned artists and those less known in Hungary displayed side by side.

The exhibition is organised as part of the Bartók Spring International Art Weeks.

Visitors can see a representativ selection from the oeuvres of Hungarian photographers who made America their home during the period historians often call the ‘short twentieth century’.

The exhibition displays more than 170 works by 32 prominent Hungarian émigré artists who settled in America. Although not all of them achieved international fame, they all played a significant role in their respective photographic genres in America.

The influence of Hungarian émigrés on twentieth century photography is enormous.

The impact of Robert Capa alone is impressive, but that of André Kertész, György Kepes and László Moholy-Nagy is equally significant.

These artists directly or indirectly influenced a host of important photographers, from Henri Cartier-Bresson, Richard Avedon and Aaron Siskind to Harry Callahan and Ray K. Metzker.

Modernism and surrealism are deeply rooted in the aesthetic and technical approach of numerous Hungarian-born American photographers. Their impact on photography in the twentieth century is undeniable.

The influence of the Hungarian-American photographic connection and the Hungarian-born photographers who emigrated to America has been examined by few publications.

Alex Nyerges, the director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, has been studying the Hungarian-American photographic connection for a decade, and the results of his research are presented for the first time here, at the Budapest exhibition.

In eight chapters, the exhibition examines the impact of Hungarian-born artists on American photography from their early careers in Hungary through Berlin and Paris, all the way to New York, Chicago and Hollywood.

The presentation of this immense legacy takes visitors through various locations, as well as through the genres of photojournalism and fashion photography. 

The photographic selection made by the American and Hungarian curators is supplemented by photographs coming from Hungarian public and private collections to further diversify the displayed material.

Exhibition will run until 25 August

Click here to know more about the exhibition at Museum of Fine Budapest
 

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Launched in January 2014, this newsletter published on week days covers 'everything you need to know about what’s going on in Hungary and beyond', according to its publisher the state media agency MTI.