Magyar Masala”, an exhibition by masters and young talents from Hungary will bring into focus Hungarian art from Pecs, a city in South Hungary.  The contemporary art by Ilona Keseru and her students - Istvan Bencsik, Sandor Pinczehelyi, Ern Tolvaly, Ferenc Lantos, Karoly Halasz,  Peter Somody,  Klara Orosz, Ferenc Varga, Istvan Losonczy, Zsolt Keserue and Rita Varga)

The exhibition in collaboration with The Hungarian Information & Cultural Centre, New Delhi will be held from January 16 to 29 at Gallery Sumukha , BTS Bus Depot Road, Wilson Garden. The exhibition will be inaugurated by Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany at 6.30 pm on January 16.

Pecs, a city in South Hungary, has a distinguished role in Hungarian and European art. From Bauhaus, a cultural heritage of the European Art School living even today, several institutions were founded in this city : museum collections, galleries and an allover art education from the foundation to the medium and high levels.

This exhibition tries to give an overview of prominent contemporary artists and outstanding art pieces from the present art scenario of the city of Pecs.

The present collection, with different dimensions in size, genre and variety, represents a communication in art that is valid also in a geographic sense.

The works on display here have a special dialogue with one another, which in the case of many pieces, may be similar to the relationship between master and disciple. This collection has special emphasis on the similarities in the conception of works spanning generations.

A visual model

Our endeavour is to present the parallels between visual signals, symbols and the usage of symbols that have references in creating structural symbols of a certain visual model. Beyond the coincidences in style and genre we are trying to present the similarities in perception and in intention of the creators that are apparently manifested in the layers of the meaning of the art pieces.

The exhibition also points to the transparency of the various media - like paintings, small sculptures and the new medium. The use of medium in art and its interpretation has become one of the key issues of all discourses on visual art nowadays.

The artists of Pecs, since the neo-avant-garde, have become active and progressive participants of and contributors to this issue. The creative formation of many of the artists who are represented here, has been rooted from this era only.

These expansive endeavours and impressions, lasting even till today, are noticeable in some of the works of the younger generation as well as in the re-interpretation of certain issues like the meaning, the function and the mission of art.

There have been significant changes going on in the global and European visual art scenario.

New forms

The pictorial depiction and the culture of secondary verbalisation have taken art to new forms in which visual art, and specifically fine art, has been characterised by a hermeneutical double role, as a “lingual system”, it has to maintain and ensure a certain integrative role, secondly it has to be suitable to make new structures of notions and standards that can be suitable for global dialogues and for description and interpretation of new situations.

Pecs, the sub-Mediterranean city with a population of barely two hundred thousand, is going to become the cultural capital of Europe in 2010. Being a cultural capital of Europe means quite a different thing in India than bearing this title in Pecs.