Art Deco Budapest – The new exhibition of the National Gallery can be seen from Tuesday
The Hungarian National Gallery (MNG) Art Deco Budapest – Posters, Objects, Spaces (1925-1938) evokes the visual culture of Budapest in the 1920s and 1930s through about 250 posters, furniture, clothing, works of applied art and other works of art. exhibition on Tuesday.
MNG’s latest exhibition does not focus on an artistic oeuvre or a creative school, but on a lifestyle, a world of taste: the art deco so characteristic of Budapest in the twenties and thirties, said Annamária Vígh, director of the National Gallery, at the exhibition’s press presentation on Monday.
As he added, the material presented was based on the rich collection of MNG. An exciting exhibition from the art deco poster collection of the institution’s graphic collection could have been organized, but many special works of art also arrived from the National Széchényi Library (OSZK) and the Museum of Applied Arts – emphasized Annamária Vígh.
According to curator Anikó Katona, the exhibition was preceded by seven-year-old researchers, during which they found many treasures that had never been shown before. MNG used to host a similar exhibition, with so many items ranging from a lizard leather bag to a ceramic tea set, from a woodcut book to clothes, he added, adding that the focus of the exhibition remained on poster art nonetheless.
The term art deco was not actually coined until the 1960s, with the aim of describing this particular style, which used the achievements of the avant-garde and the Bauhaus, but its essential elements remained decorativeness, lightness and elegance.
This world of tastes, fed from many sources, spread primarily through the metropolitan middle class, but, for example through cinema posters, affected all sections of society.
By the early twenties, women’s fashion had changed radically. Corsets disappeared, clothes became shorter, so sports, diet, beauty became more important than ever before, but makeup was not used only by “half-world” women; and all this can be well traced on the posters of the era.
Art deco has also broken into bourgeois homes, with furniture softer than the Bauhaus or emblematic objects such as the Orion radio on display. Orion is an excellent example of the thinking of the era, as the United Bulb brand launched not only a logo designed with the distinctive three-faced head, but an entire image, Anikó Katona recalled.
Yet the symbolic places of city life were the department stores, which also took great care to design their posters, packaging materials and paper bags.
It was at this time that Hollywood lived its golden age, providing entertainment available to all walks of life. By the 1920s, the genres of cinematography had already developed and had their stars – such as the romantic hero Valentino or the naive Vilma Bánky – but it is interesting that all foreign films also received a poster with a local design in Hungary.
One of the outstanding pieces of the movie posters is a masterpiece designed for József Bottlik’s Fritz Lang Metropolis. This work is still often reproduced in international art history, but originally only one copy of the poster remains: visitors can also see the print kept by the NSZL.
The nightclubs and revues of Budapest were known throughout Europe in this era, with such legendary institutions as Arizona on Nagymező Street. This rich nightlife is evoked by costume designs, posters and other artefacts in the exhibition, which runs until August 28th.
As the organizers pointed out, the exhibition entitled Art Deco Budapest is also in the center of the MNG Museum + evening on April 20, when guided tours and conversations will introduce those interested to the world of the twenties and thirties.