Fine art collection

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The collection

The collection of Ferenczy Museum Center offers a unique insight into the last hundred years of national fine arts from naturalism to public art. The first pieces of the collection were received by the then newly established Ferenczy Károly Museum in 1951. New items had periodically been, and are still, added to the collection until the current, more dynamic concept was consolidated, which is of  a wider perspective than was before and  at the same time it prioritizes artists working in and around the city. The main focuses and guideline of this collection of approximately 10000 pieces are reflected in the present structure that embraces the founders of the Szentendre artists’ colony, its contemporary artists, and those living and working in the town.

The collection, considered relatively prominent nationwide, puts emphasis on well-known schools such as the Nagybánya school, from which the Neos were formed, The Eights, the European School, the Hungarian section of the École de Paris, the modern abstraction of the ’60s, the constructivist ambitions,  Surrealism, Dada, and their neo-avant garde and modern versions, already cited as “Szentendre art” today. The works of Lajos Vajda, Endre Bálint, Dezső Korniss, Margit Anna and Imre Ámos, and the artistic legacy of Jenő Barcsay, Béla Czóbel, János Kmetty have influenced several generations. These artists, who have left behind works and oeuvres regarded exceptional in the history of Hungarian art, have an outstanding role in the collection.

Cricket Wedding by Dezső Korniss, an oil painting, stands out in his oeuvre not only because of its size, but also because it is one of the masterpieces of Hungarian history of art as well as of the collection. The work,painted in Szentendre in the summer of 1948, is the synthesis of an entire period with regard to the its motifs, colors, and composition. Lajos Vajda is famous for his self-portraits with icons, one of which, Self-portrait with Icon (1936), is displayed in the museum. The naively painted lonely figure in Margit Anna’s emblematic masterpiece, The Fisherman (1979), is the self-portrait of the artist.

The works of Lajos Varga Studio and of the contemporary Szentendre painters (Pál Deim, Péter Bereznai, István efZambó, László feLugossy, Rudolf Pacsika, Ottó Vincze, András Warhorn, among others) occupy a significant place in the collection.