Abstract Hungary

Since the 1960s, artists in Hungary have displayed a penchant for abstraction when it comes to complex social conditions and efforts to enact political change.

The abstracted visual language of Hungarian artists is the focus in the Künstlerhaus exhibition “Ábstract Hungary” curated by Ákos Ezer, a painter who in this catalog hastranslated the present-day reality in his home country through the framework of "abstraction." This theme is, in fact, a revival, as the Künstlerhaus has previously presented the group exhibition “Abstract Hungary” in 2017. With a sweeping selection of twenty-four Hungarian artists, including Imre Bak, Tamás Kaszás, Dóra Maurer, and Zsolt Tibor, the show was devoted to methods of abstraction of varying dialogical nature. The exhibition represented a broader narrative blueprint of the hotly debated term “abstraction” and showed both established and aspiring artistic positions, some of which were exhibited there in Austria for the first time.

This exhibition catalogue seeks to expand these two eponymous projects, and consolidate the abstracted view of Hungary.

Contributors
Dávid Fehér, Áron Fenyvesi, Michael Wimmer, Mónika Zsikla

Published by Sternberg Press and Künstlerhaus Halle für Kunst und Medien, Graz AT