Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 105. (Budapest, 2006)
ANNUAL REPORT - A 2006. ÉV - JUDIT GESKÓ: Van Gogh in Budapest
VAN GOGH IN BUDAPEST 1 December 2006 - 20 March 2007 (extended until 1 April 2007) Curator: Judit Geskó VAN GOGH IN BUDAPEST, ED. | U DIT GESKÓ, MUSEUM OF EINE ARTS AND VINCE BOOKS. BUDAPEST 2007. 578 PAGES. 250 COL. ILLS.. ISBN 078 963 7063 34-3 Until now the works of Vincent Van Gogh had never been exhibited independently in Hungary, and only a few paintings have ever been displayed in Budapest. The first of such occasions was probably the exhibition in the National Salon in 1907 but there is no doubt that Van Gogh was represented in 1910 in the House of Artists (Művészház). This present retrospective exhibition has been the first to tentatively outline the major stages of Van Gogh's career as an artist and the key artistic concepts of his various phases for a Hungarian audience. At the same time it was our aim to present the latest results of research into Van Gogh since the œuvre exhibition of 1990 in Amsterdam and Otterlo, which commemorated the centenary of Van Gogh's death, inspired a new generation of Van Gogh scholars to raise several issues. Van Gogh's œuvre, which he created during a period often years, consists of nearly 3,000 works, including drawings and small sketches. The art historians of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo are presently engaged in compiling a catalogue of these works. These two institutions were the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts' main partners in the staging of the exhibition. The Dutch scholars also shared their latest academic research findings from the ongoing research projects at the two museums. Some of these studies carried out in recent decades can be used to prove or disprove the authenticity of a given work. The new critical edition of Van Gogh's letters is also of immense help in dating certain works, and in determining their authenticity, their artistic predecessors and their context of interpretation. Besides the two Dutch museums, some thirty other museums and several art collectors contributed to the exhibition by placing their works of art at our disposal. Thanks to these loans we were able to present the museum-going public with a Van Gogh whose œuvre comes along with a myriad of links to the European as well as to the Far Eastern traditions of art history, and which played a major role in the formation of the modern art of the twentieth century. The latter aspect was the second major keynote of the Budapest exhibition: to portray not just a lonely madman but rather a painter working amidst the artistic trends at the ttirbulent
