« Károly Ferenczy, Modernité hongroise » au Petit Palais

Petit Palais - Musée des beaux-arts de la Ville de Paris

As famous in Hungary as he is little known in France, Károly Ferenczy (1862-1917) is a major figure of modernity in Central Europe. His profoundly singular body of work establishes him as one of the great painters of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. With this first French retrospective, the Petit Palais aims to highlight his fundamental originality. Neither naturalist, nor symbolist, nor impressionist, nor nabi, but a little of all of these at once, he embodies fin-de-siècle cosmopolitanism in the full breadth of his culture. A founding member of an artists' colony settled in the heart of the Hungarian countryside, Ferenczy made plein air painting one of his most emblematic practices. In nature, he sought the expression of a syncretic spirituality. Under his brush, the sun often appears as a central protagonist in landscapes of unparalleled light. With nearly 140 works, the exhibition highlights the many facets of the artist's approach − landscapes, portraits, family scenes, biblical subjects, nudes and caricatures − and reveals Károly Ferenczy's fundamental role in the emergence of a genuinely modern artistic school in Hungary. The exhibition was designed in collaboration with the musée des Beaux-Arts de Budapest and the Galerie nationale hongroise.

Source: Paris Open Data ↗