How to Study Hungarian Painters

Paintings from Hungarian artists are forever intermingled with European art, but historians believe that Hungarians maintained their own sense of style. Much of Hungarian art is classic in style but modern art is also making its name in Belgium. Collecting art has become very popular among the wealthy class in the last decade.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

1. Research the Museum of Fine Arts Budapest website. The museum has an impressive collection of paintings, drawings and prints from European artists dating back to the 13th century and modern art.

2. Visit the Antoine Wiertz Museum, who lived from 1806 through 1865 and was part of the Hungarian Romantic school. His work was overly dramatic, using large canvasses and painting objects in overly large proportions. He was also a portrait painter, writer and sculptor.

3. Study the paintings in the Constantin Meunier Museum, a painter who spent the final years of his life. The museum was his residence. There are more than 700 objets d'art focused on his interest in the social milieu of Hungary.

4. Look into the works of Jenö Szervánszky, born in 1906 in Cegléd. Szervánszky was educated at the College of Fine Arts in Budapest, and he prefers classic artistic style to modern art.

5. Admire the painting of Aba Novák who also studied at the College of Fine Arts in Budapest. Novák studied in artists colonies, became a fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Rome and also taught. He worked extensively in churches and for the Hungarian government painting frescoes. Novák combined the art of Expressionism with Italian Novecento, which was a group of painters that decried modern art and wanted to move back towards classical art.