By introducing guided tours, we intend to help foreign visitors to orientate themselves in the probably not well known territory of Hungarian fine arts. The tours add more information to those (biographies and picture comments) found hitherto in the collection. On these tours visitors can be acquainted with the different periods, trends and styles as well as with the most significant artists and their main works. In addition to the guided tours special virtual exhibitions are also presented. These exhibitions, arranged together with co-operating parthers (museums galleries, libraries, other websites), are in some cases the virtual versions of real exhibitions.

1. Centuries of Painting and Sculpture in Hungary



Description: The tour consists of several itineraries by which visitors can trace the periods of painting and sculpture in Hungary from the 11th to the 20th century. By these itineraries - which can be taken separately - you get an overview on the Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque art as well as that of the 19th and 20th century.





2. Hungarian Landscape Painting in the 19th-20th Century

Description: The variety of the Hungarian countryside inspired several great painters to create masterpieces. This tour guides you to discover this domain of painting presenting the main trends, the major artists and the most significant artworks.




3. Historical Painting in the 19th Century

Description: Historical painting was in full flower in the second half of the 19th century in Hungary when, in the decades after the defeat of the 1848-49 Revolution, it grew into an effective supporter of national resistance. This tour introduces the great masters of this genre and presents the most significant masterpieces.





4. High Altar by Master M S at Selmecbánya

Description: The High Altar of the Mary's Church at Selmecbánya (Upper Hungary) painted by Master M S in 1506, especially its panel representing The Visitation, is one of the most important paintings of the late Gothic period in Hungary. Although we know nothing about the Master he was certainly a significant artist. The tour presents the reconstruction of the dismembered altar the remaining panels of which are now dispersed in various museums.






5. Story of the Nagybánya Artists' Colony

Description: This tour presents the story of the Nagybánya artists' colony and school from its establishment in 1896 by Simon Hollósy up to the closing in 1937 and its after-life following the Second World War. This artists' colony represents the most important movement in the artistic life in Hungary at the beginning of the 20th century. The art radiating from Nagybánya deeply influenced Hungarian art of the century.





6. Neoclassicism in Hungarian Painting

Description: The neoclassicist phenomenon, observed in Hungarian painting and graphic art of the first half of the 1920s, is explained by this tour. Primarily, the artists of the so-called Szőnyi-circle (István Szőnyi, Erzsébet Korb, Vilmos Aba-Novák, Károly Patkó) can be classified into the neoclassical tendency. The time-frame of this style is clean-cut: the first characteristic works of the Szőnyi-circle were created in 1919, from 1925 their style developed into diverse directions, and winning the fellowship to Rome in 1928 started a new period for all of them.






Special exhibitions

1. Landscapes by Thomas Ender (1793-1875)

In co-operation: with the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Description: The watercolours presented here for the first time to a wider public were painted by the Austrian landscape painter Thomas Ender (1793-1875) in the northern and north-eastern parts of the former territory of Hungary and the mountains of Galicia, on locations in present-day Slovakia, also Poland, the Ukraine, and Hungary. The 220 paintings were donated to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1868 by Count János Waldstein (1809-1876), jurist, patron of the arts, and member of the Academy's Board of Directors. Today the Waldstein Collection is deposited in the Department of Manuscripts and Rare Books of the Library of the Academy.


2. Mattis Teutsch and the Der Blaue Reiter

In co-operation with the Hungarian National Gallery and the MissionArt Gallery

Description: János Mattis Teutsch was a versatile artist, painter, graphic artist, sculptor, theoretician and poet who is now known to belong to the circle of avangarde artists. Although he was their contemporary and his art was international, his artistic language is unambiguously individualist. The exhibition presents the oeuvre of the slightly forgotten artist and his relationship to the Dre Blaue Reiter group.





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Created and maintained by Emil Krén and Dániel Marx; sponsored by the T-Systems Hungary Ltd.