Fine Arts Museum celebrates Csontvary anniversary with major exhibition

The comprehensive exhibition celebrates the 170th anniversary of Csontvary’s birth, regarded as one of the most original and most well-known artists in the history of Hungarian painting.

The show will bring together greatest number of works so far, with several of his best-known monumental canvases on loan from the Hungarian National Gallery and the Csontvary Museum of Pecs.

“The oeuvre of perhaps the most original master in the history of Hungarian painting has now been united,” Laszlo Baan, the director of the museum, told reporters at a press tour of the exhibition.

“This is a powerful, exciting and poignant, as well as a definitely magical exhibition that brings the master’s lifetime career alive,” said Baan.

The exhibition features titles including the iconic Ruins of the Ancient Greek Theatre at Taormina, the thirty-square-metre Baalbek, the Pilgrimage to the Cedars in Lebanon and the Lonely Cedar, among others.

A section presents his early portraits, self-portraits, bird paintings and the landscapes inspired by his study visit to Italy.

The exhibition will run until July 16 in Budapest and travel to Pecs afterwards.