It focuses primarily on the woman artist, the role of women in art history, the female body, and societal roles and expectations.

Exhibition curator Krisztina Szipőcs graduated as an art historian in 1992, training also in Vienna and New York, and has worked at the Ludwig since 1994. She began as a museologist and is now deputy director and chief curator.

“I consider the museum my home, having witnessed its development from the beginning to the present,” she tells me.

The Ludwig decided to make art by women the focus of its 35th anniversary because “contemporary art and its institutional framework are deeply connected to pressing current issues including the recurring topic of female quotes in politics, economics, and other aspects of life.”

In some respects, women were in a better position or, as Szipőcs puts it, “more emancipated” under socialism than in the West. The socialist system encouraged them to work, and nurseries and kindergartens supported this. Women could do jobs traditionally done by men.

But they also shouldered the bulk of household responsibilities and childcare. Women were less present in fine arts education than in the study of applied arts.

Since the political transition from socialism, women have been more present in the fine arts education system. But, as Szipőcs says, “Our middle class is shrinking. Art education is inadequate, with almost no focus on contemporary art. Career development is still hindered by ‘invisible labor’ and the glass ceiling; women’s need to divide their time and energy between family responsibilities and their artistic work and career.”

Although collecting contemporary art seems to me to be booming in this country, the Hungarian art scene is a Western-style, market-driven system.

Fortunate Few

“Those who have regular buyers are very fortunate, but, in my network, even this is often not enough for a secure livelihood,” Szipőcs says. “Only elderly, well-established artists can command prices high enough to not only make a living but also provide a degree of relative comfort. Currently, there are only about five or six artists in this position.”

As Szipőcs explains, “The greatest challenge is for a newly graduated artist to continue making work and living from their art. Grant and award systems enable only a few to focus only on creating art. The vast majority must find other sources of income, leaving little or no time to make art.”

Women’s Quota 01 includes work by several significant women artists. Among them are Hungarians Orshi Drozdik (based in New York), Judit Kele, Zsuzsi Ujj, Beáta Veszely, Ilona Németh and Kriszta Nagy. The work included by Polish artist Katarzyna Kozyra was made in Budapest.

Orshi Drozdik, the most important feminist critic in this country in the 1970s, found it difficult to make her way in an institutional system traditionally dominated by men. Her “Medical Venus” is based on a model of Drozdik’s body and depicts her at the mercy of the medical gaze.

Artist, film director and set and costume designer Judit Kele places herself in the role of the art object, questioning the position of the Eastern European woman artist, the value of the woman and the female body.

Performer Zsuzsi Ujj made a series of black and white self-portraits in the 1980s in which she strips her body and soul down to the bone, to the skeleton painted on her skin.

Beáta Veszely works with photographs of famous portraits of women from the history of art. She transforms the ideal representations of women by men as biblical, classical and Renaissance nudes by using tiny pinpricks. This turns the photographs into fragile objects similar to needlework or lace and reclaims them for the female gaze.

Hidden Cameras

Using hidden camera footage in Budapest’s baths, Katarzyna Kozyra’s six-channel video installation investigates whether female and male behavior changes in a gender-free environment. First shown in 1997, the installation recalls the work of Ingres, Rubens and Degas and questions the ideal of the perfect female body.

Szipőcs especially admires the work of Ilona Németh, a Hungarian national from Slovakia. Her gynecological chairs evoke images of women’s illnesses, pregnancy, sexuality or female vulnerability using velvet, rabbit hair and moss as coverings.

“Németh’s work addresses questions and issues that go far beyond herself or her art,” Szipőcs says.

If you know anything about art in Hungary, the work that may be most familiar to you is that by Kriszta Nagy. For her 1998 piece “I am a Contemporary Painter,” she posed in the style of lingerie ads on a billboard in Budapest’s Lövölde tér.

Her aim, she said, was to “draw attention to contemporary art; I wanted to communicate that we exist. I also wanted to point out the prejudices that surround artists and make it impossible for us to assert ourselves.”

Nagy’s “I am a Contemporary Painter” is presented as a counterpoint to the nudes painted by men hung on the main wall in the first hall of the exhibition space. Nagy’s work critiques the traditionally passive role of women in art and their objectification.

While women artists in Hungary still face many challenges, “there’s a growing awareness of the constraints they face in this country and a growth in initiatives aimed at more equal representation and support for women,” Szipőcs tells me.

“But substantial progress will likely depend on a shift toward a more inclusive, robust art market and greater advocacy within art institutions.”

Find out more about Women’s Quota 01 at ludwigmuseum.hu.

This is the first of a two-part exhibition. Part two will present exciting work by artists who are less familiar to the public.