New publication by Éva Forgács, EURIAS fellow 2012-2013

Hungarian Art: Confrontation and Revival in the Modern Movement

Éva Forgács, DoppelHouse Press, 320 pages with 102 illustrations, December 2016.

A collection of insightful essays, monographic texts and rarely seen images tracing from birth to maturation several generations of Hungarian Modernism.

Leading modernist scholar Éva Forgács corrects long-standing misconceptions about Hungarian art while examining the work and social milieu of dozens of important Hungarian artists, including such figures as László Moholy-Nagy and Lajos Kassák, to paint a fascinating image of 20th century Budapest as a microcosm of the social and political turmoil raging across Europe between the late 19th century and the collapse of the Soviet Era.

"A pioneering intellectual survey of Hungarian art in the long twentieth century. Populated by extraordinary figures such as Béla Balázs, whose dream of a great new Hungarian culture amounted to the founding of a new “religion of art,” this authoritative book repositions cultural giants such as László Moholy-Nagy, Lajos Kassák, and György Lukács within a series of fascinating interpersonal, philosophical and political fields. Forgács also entices readers to engage with a host of less well known artists and forgotten initiatives: the European School; the transcendentalist revivers of Malevich; the exponents of the postmodern ‘new sensibility’ of the 1980s; the post-socialist post-constructivists of the 1990s. She challenges canons and attacks key questions head on, provocatively exploring, among other things, whether or not “democracy grows under pressure.” The culmination of decades of sustained research, this erudite publication is an immensely precious resource and a vital contribution to the further exploration of the rich intertextual fabric of European art as a whole." – Klara Kemp-Welch, Courtauld Institute of Art.