A temporary exhibition presenting the first golden age of Hungarian poster art has opened at the Hungarian National Gallery, where visitors can discover posters made in the Art Nouveau style at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The exhibition features some 120 posters by artists such as József Rippl-Rónai, János Vaszary and Károly Ferenczy, and alongside these renowned painters, artists who specialised in posters also appear. The exhibition presents the development of the poster genre and its beginnings in Hungary in an international context, featuring works by the greatest names of the genre, including Alphonse Mucha, Gustav Klimt, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Koloman Moser and others.
The posters advertise a wide variety of things (newspapers, theatres, cabarets, nightclubs and commercial products), and so evoke the era in which they were made. The exhibition offers glimpses of the world of middle-class homes, urban nightlife at the turn of the century, the atmosphere of coffee houses, the fashions and habits of city women, and the popular leisure activities of the time: cycling, visits to spas and glittering balls. One of the most important motifs of the posters is woman, who appears in the most varied roles, from the self-assured society lady to the ethereal muse.
Alongside masterpieces of Art Nouveau advertising graphics, the exhibition also evokes the Art Nouveau material culture of the period – books, periodicals, applied art objects, ceramics and furniture – presenting more than two hundred works in total.
Source: mng.hu