Annamária Vigh, Deputy Director General of the Museum of Fine Arts - Hungarian National Gallery (MNG), called the aim of the exhibition to focus on the poster genre, especially considering that Hungarian poster art made a lasting impact internationally during the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

Art Nouveau was the first major, comprehensive stylistic endeavor of the modern era, whose followers wanted to leave a mark on all aspects of life, including buildings, furniture, and a multitude of cultural objects of applied arts, emphasized Annamária Vigh.

He added that the exhibition will reveal a special, novel urban world, as the exhibited artworks attempt to depict the world of theaters, cabarets, baths, and various sporting events.

The artworks come primarily from the MNG poster collection, but works were also borrowed from the collections of the National Széchényi Library, the Museum of Applied Arts and the Kiscelli Museum.
- the deputy director general listed.

The second industrial revolution, which occurred during the Art Nouveau period - which brought about enormous changes in the field of energy production - gave new opportunities to creators, who were no longer only able to "play" with natural light , but were also able to exploit the possibilities offered by artificial light through public lighting - drew attention to this, said Károly Mátrai, CEO of MVM Zrt.

Anikó Katona, the curator of the exhibition, highlighted:

The exhibition features around 120 posters by artists such as József Rippl-Rónai, János Vaszary or Károly Ferenczy, and in addition to renowned painters, there are also artists specializing in posters, including Géza Faragó, Mihály Biró, Ferenc Helbing and Márton Tuszkay.

He added that the exhibition presents the development of the poster genre and its beginnings in Hungary in an international context, featuring the works of the greatest of the genre, Alfons Mucha, Gustav Klimt, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Koloman Moser and others.

The press materials distributed at the event recalled that the poster emerged as a new genre of metropolitan culture on the streets of Paris and London at the end of the 19th century; its emergence was an expression of metropolitan lifestyle and the result of mass production and consumption.

The poster is a thoroughly modern phenomenon, a means of advertising, but at the same time, from the very beginning, it identified itself as a high art form, with its own unique aesthetics, outstanding creators and fans.

The posters on display advertise a wide variety of phenomena (newspapers, theaters, cabarets, nightclubs, and commercial products), thus recalling the era in which they were made.

The exhibition provides a glimpse into the world of bourgeois homes, the urban nightlife of the turn of the century, the atmosphere of coffee houses, the clothing and customs of urban women, the leisure activities popular at the time, visits to spas and special balls.

One of the most important motifs of the posters is the woman, who appears in a wide variety of roles, from the self-conscious high society lady to the ethereal muse.

The exhibition, which can be visited until October 5 - accompanied by a catalogue published in both Hungarian and English - is supported by the Hungarian National Museum Public Collection Centre (MNMKK), the National Széchényi Library (OSZK), the Museum of Applied Arts of the MNMKK, and the Kiscelli Museum of the Budapest History Museum (BMT); its main sponsor is the MVM Group.

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Hungarian National Gallery
1014 Budapest, Szent György tér 2.