Szentendre went through a period of transition at the beginning of the 20th century. The process of Magyarization, which had been intensifying since the turn of the century, fundamentally altered the town’s social and cultural structure, and the traumas of World War I, the Hungarian Soviet Republic, and the Treaty of Trianon brought economic and political uncertainty. The formerly multi-ethnic but predominantly Serb-led settlement sought opportunities for development during this period. At that time, Szentendre was a small town with a rural atmosphere, built on traditions of trade and craftsmanship; however, the processes that began in the 1920s steered it toward a different vision of the future.
Mayors who came from outside the town became the defining figures of the era; their agenda set modernization, infrastructure development, and the creation of a future based on tourism as their goals. Their ideas were not necessarily accepted; a local lobby, which grew stronger from time to time, advocated for the city’s transformation into a large municipality. Of course, the town’s development potential was strongly influenced not only by the visions of local and national leaders but also by its geographical location—its proximity to the Danube, the Pilis Mountains, and Budapest—as well as by continuous population movement and its relationship with the ruling power of the day.
Looking back from the present, the enthusiastic embrace of the artists’ colony in 1926 laid the foundation for the creation of a city image rooted in the visual arts. The Back to the Future exhibition, marking the centennial of the founding of the Old Artists’ Colony in Szentendre, evokes some well-known and lesser-known figures from the host town’s society, as well as the dilemmas of the town’s development and the trends of its transformation, largely through period photographs.