A new temporary exhibition opens at the Hungarian National Gallery. The exhibition opens on April 4, 2025, can be visited until October 5.
The exhibition presents the first golden age of Hungarian poster art, which developed in the spirit of the Art Nouveau style at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The exhibition, which takes place within the framework of the Bartók Spring International Art Weeks, evokes the Art Nouveau object culture of the era, in addition to masterpieces of Art Nouveau poster art and advertising graphics, presenting books, magazines, as well as applied art objects, ceramics and furniture, a total of more than two hundred works of art.
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, such as Géza Faragó, Mihály Biró, Ferenc Helbing, Márton Tuszkay. Despite the fact that it boasts outstanding individual works even in international comparison, there has been no comprehensive exhibition or book on early Hungarian poster art. 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.
By the last decades of the 19th century, the functioning of the economy and society had also fundamentally changed: the modern age had arrived. The new style, Art Nouveau, also responded to the changed world. The modern age required modern forms: Art Nouveau no longer drew from the styles of the past, but from nature. It stylized living organic forms into ornaments, and beautiful decorative patterns could cover any object. This was the first artistic movement that consciously sought to transform the entirety of visual culture in the spirit of modernity. Since the ideal of Art Nouveau was all-art, it was truly "the art of life", its aestheticism permeated everyday life. Thus, he flourished primarily in applied fields. His views were effectively popularized among the widest audience through various popular genres, such as poster art, which is the focus of our exhibition.
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 it identified itself from the very beginning as a high art form with its own unique aesthetics and prominent creators, fans and collectors.
The decades following the Compromise were one of the most significant periods of development in the history of Hungary, accompanied by a flourishing of culture. The establishment of the new genre, the poster, and the new style, Art Nouveau, were promoted by exhibitions, specialist journals, education and institutions, and by the turn of the century, Art Nouveau had permeated the urban visual culture.
The posters 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, and the popular leisure activities of the time, such as cycling, visiting spas or glittering 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 posters, with their delicate painterly solutions or decorative line culture, proclaim the Art Nouveau ideal of beauty, delight, or even try to win the audience's favor with their humor. Through them, one can relive the atmosphere of the last happy years of peace before the First World War.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published in both Hungarian and English.
Curator of the exhibition: Anikó Katona, art historian
More information on the official MNG website.
EN 
HU