An exhibition drawn from Hungary's largest private collection of works by József Egry has opened at the Vaszary Gallery in Balatonfüred. Fifty-five of the eighty works in the collection by the painter of Lake Balaton are on display.
The exhibition József Egry – Floating in the Space of Light (Egry József – Lebegés a fénytérben) was selected from the private collection of the ResoArt Foundation. It gives the public a more comprehensive insight into the artist than ever before.
“The exhibition guides visitors through every important stage of József Egry's artistic development, while also revealing the essence of modern Hungarian painting. Egry's pictures still feel fresh today, and their strongly atmospheric, emotionally charged modernism makes them timeless,” said Anna Sipos, the exhibition's curator, adding that when putting the exhibition together, an important consideration was to include the artist's early, lesser-known works alongside his major pieces.
Egry began to develop his distinctive painterly world as early as the beginning of the 1900s; his scenes of rural life were later replaced by figures of men doing hard physical labour. Then came the world war and, in 1916, a life-changing encounter with his future wife, Juliska. During a military exercise, the ice gave way beneath the artist. He was taken to the hospital in Badacsony with pneumonia, where not only recovery but also love awaited him in the person of the nurse, Juliska – and in the “Hungarian sea” he found his new artistic subject.
From then on, the artist spent most of his life at Lake Balaton, and it was this landscape that inspired him. He would study a single phenomenon for months, and only began to work once he had fully absorbed what he saw. His landscapes were based on the observation of nature and of atmospheric light effects.
Businessman and art collector András Szabó, owner of the ResoArt villa in Budapest, and his partner Magdolna Költő bought their first Balaton-themed Egry painting in 2005; twenty years of collecting have produced a collection that is now unique in Hungary.
The exhibition József Egry – Floating in the Space of Light / Selection from the ResoArt Collection can be seen at the Vaszary Gallery until 21 June.
Source: MTI