Our exhibition evokes the ideas in painting in Hungary in the late 1980s and early 1990s with works that are unknown in the local scene, because they were immediately sent from the studios to private collections abroad after their completion. Our current show – following Symmetry with Counterpoints and Mannerism of the Nomads of the ´80s,- is the third in a series of shows presenting the period after the New Sensibility.
Everything that art historian Éva Forgács emphasized in connection with the paradigm-shifting period – the sense of the liberation of the social environment, the joy of creation, the generosity of existence and the emergence of the broader horizon – is present in the works made from 1988 to 1992.
But in the period of events that began in the spring of 1988 and shaped new political horizons – the strengthening of the reform wing of the state party in May 1988, the ousting of Kádár, and from November onwards further changes in the leadership, and in March 1989 the emergence of a multi-party system, i.e. the pluralisation of public life – changes were also noticeable in art.
In painting, more radical forms of expression emerge, solutions close to monochrome, for example, or, conversely, the use of full colour gamuts. And corresponding with the formal changes, the themes of the works are also determined by the desire for infinity. In space and time (in the dimensions of the universe and the planet), in relations of knowledge and conjecture, in emotions or spirituality and transcendence, but also in poetry. There is also a renewed sense – and this is a change from the artistic attitude of the first period of the decade – of an affinity with science and the classical Russian avant-garde.
All this “without ever giving up the sensual element – in the use of colour and form, in the treatment of materials and surfaces: from large-format and generous expressivity towards meditative and/or playful-ironic post-geometry” – as art historian László Százados wrote earlier about this range of works.
In addition to the best-known artists of the period, we also present works by artists from this time whose work has received less attention recently, but they may contribute new insights to our understanding of the art in the years of regime change.