The Hungarian National Gallery starts the new year with a full slate of tours, kids’ workshops, artist talks, and hands-on sessions that trace Hungarian art from the Middle Ages to modernity. Expect permanent and temporary exhibitions, guided visits in multiple languages, family days, festivals, concerts, and plenty of art education for children—from creative clubs to summer camps. January is anchored by a sweeping celebration of painter Lajos Tihanyi on the 140th anniversary of his birth, with landmark works and intimate artifacts on display.
Rebel Shapes, Daring Colors — Lajos Tihanyi
On January 9, 11, 17, 23, and 25, the gallery spotlights Lajos Tihanyi’s radical voice in Hungarian modernism. Deaf from childhood, Tihanyi wrested color and form from silence and found his own language in paint—outside the academy and against convention. His distinctive visual vocabulary made him a defining member of Nyolcak (The Eight) and one of the most original figures in 20th-century Hungarian art. Visitors can see his essential paintings and drawings alongside personal objects, with guided tours available to unpack the turns of his career and the restless energy of his compositions. On January 25, a tour with sign language interpretation makes the show even more accessible.
Sunlit Rooms and Lively Markets — Adolf Fényes (Fényes Adolf)
On January 10, the gallery turns to Adolf Fényes (Fényes Adolf), a sensitive painter straddling the 19th and 20th centuries. His canvases let sunlight stream through humble interiors, stir markets to storybook life, and treat everyday moments with the weight of history painting. The tour wends from peasant courtyards to the shadow of French Impressionism, linking a veranda in Szolnok to Paris and reading century-old genre scenes for what they reveal about the simple joys and sorrows of the era.
Snowflake Dance for Toddlers
January 13 and 27 bring Tipegők — Hópihe tánc (Toddlers — Snowflake Dance), a winter micro-adventure for the littlest visitors. Gloves on, boots laced: kids explore how forests turn white and what colors still glimmer under snow. Songs, stories, and a snowflake dance turn the galleries into a gentle seasonal playground.
Kids’ Detective Club: Color It Again!
The workshop series Színezd újra! — múzeumi műhely gyerekeknek (Color It Again! — Museum Studio for Kids) runs on January 14, 21, and 28. The galleries are wrapped in mystery, and young sleuths are recruited to track down Tihanyi’s secrets. The mission: examine dozens of his works, unearth hidden details, and piece together the puzzle. Along the way, the studio flips to “forensic” mode—children try their hand at playful “forgeries,” build a composite portrait, and experiment with photo manipulation.
Silence Speaks — Family Time
On January 15 and 29, Mama, nézd! — A csend beszél (Mom, Look! — Silence Speaks) explores how Tihanyi’s childhood illness and resulting deafness shaped a singular artistic voice. The session turns a perceived limitation into a lens for creativity, asking how silence can sharpen vision and how constraint can become style.
Curators, Historians, Writers
The anniversary year invites a deeper dive. On January 15, curator Mariann Gergely leads TIHANYI 140, tracing how, until the 1970s, the artist’s works were known at home mostly through black-and-white reproductions, and how his estate traveled, in adventurous fashion, from Paris to the Hungarian National Gallery fifty-five years ago. January 16 features a guided tour in Italian—Visita guidata in italiano—covering highlights from medieval to modern, with a special focus on the 19th and 20th centuries, and a playful promise that you might even bump into Dante among the canvases. That same day, art historian Gergely Barki offers an offbeat tour, Az ember a paletta mögött (The Person Behind the Palette), inside the TIHANYI 140 exhibition. On January 17, writer and art historian Rita Halász guides Betonba hímezve (Embroidered in Concrete), a personal walk-through that threads literature and art history.
Abstract Adventures
On January 17, Alkoss! — Absztrakt élményfestés (Create! — Abstract Experience Painting) invites visitors to play with the freedoms of abstraction: geometric patterns here, racing brushstrokes there. After a tour featuring giants like Sean Scully, Judit Reigl, and Simon Hantaï, participants paint their own bold abstracts.
Nudes at the Turn of the Century
On January 18, the gallery’s refreshed exhibition of fin-de-siècle nude sculptures gets a guided tour. The nude—among art’s oldest subjects—changes with each era’s ideals. This walk looks at how form, posture, and presence shifted as artists grappled with modernity.
Online and On-Site
January 22 brings an online guided tour through the Tihanyi exhibition—an at-home option timed to the Day of Hungarian Culture. On January 24, Kaland a Galériában — Különös arcok (Adventure in the Gallery — Curious Faces) offers two age-tailored tours: 10:30–11:15 for ages 6–9, and 11:30–12:15 for ages 10–13. That same day, Barki returns for a lecture, Kettő vagy egy sem. Duplázások és hiátusok Tihanyi Lajos életművében (Two or None: Doublings and Gaps in Lajos Tihanyi’s Oeuvre), probing repetitions and ruptures in the painter’s body of work.
Fresh Eyes, New Styles
On January 21, Szellemi fitnesz — Új év, új stílus (Mental Fitness — New Year, New Style) looks at artists who leap across styles. János Vaszary, József Rippl-Rónai, and Aurél Bernáth all shape-shifted so decisively their works can feel like they belong to different hands. After the gallery tour, the studio riffs on what’s seen by trying one of Rippl-Rónai’s styles.
Where to Find It
All events take place in Budapest at the Hungarian National Gallery, unless otherwise noted. From intimate toddler dances to deep-cut scholarship, the month keeps eyes bright and brushes moving—proof that Hungarian art’s past keeps sparking new conversations.
