Csontváry 170

Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka was born 170 years ago. The anniversary is marked by an exhibition jointly organised by the Museum of Fine Arts–Hungarian National Gallery and the Janus Pannonius Museum of Pécs. The displayed material assembled from the two public collections preserving the most important works of the brilliant painter will opens within the framework of the Bartók Spring International Art Weeks on 13 April, in the Museum of Fine Arts, where it will run for three months. The joint exhibition providing a comprehensive picture of the art of Csontváry will then travel to Pécs, the seat of Baranya County, to the Csontváry Museum, which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year; it can be viewed there from August for the duration of three months. The exhibition parading forty-five works pays tribute to one of the most original and best-known artists in the history of Hungarian painting.

An exhibition of Csontváry’s works last opened in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest sixty years ago, in 1963, while in Pécs the works displayed in the Csontváry Museum will be supplemented with pieces from the Budapest collection for the first time. Thanks to the cooperation between the two institutions, the public can now see Csontváry’s famous Self-portrait, The Lonely Cedar, his monumental Ruins of the Ancient Greek Theatre at Taormina, his large-scale Valley of Great Tarpatak in the High Tatra as well as his Pilgrimage to the Cedars in Lebanon and Waterfall at Jajce together.

The material of the two institutions displayed at the exhibition in the Museum of Fine Arts is also augmented by some paintings from private collections. Sacrificial Stone in Baalbek and Sunset over the Bay of Naples were last shown to the public in 1994, at the Csontváry exhibition organised by the Hungarian National Gallery.