Budapest marks the 140th birthday of Lajos Tihanyi with a sweeping career exhibition that brings together almost 200 works: major paintings, graphics, and personal effects from his estate. One of the leading voices of Hungarian Expressionism and the avant‑garde, Tihanyi pursued daring color harmonies and abstract forms without ever losing his edge. The show unfolds at 1014 Budapest, Szent György Square (Szent György tér) 2, with several themed guided tours on site and online, plus a packed February program that branches into family workshops and music-led events. Images are under the Museum of Fine Arts’ copyright.
Rebel forms, bold colors
Titled Rebel Forms, Bold Colors – The Art of Lajos Tihanyi, the core guided tour invites visitors to dive into the painter’s vocabulary on multiple dates: January 31 (3:00–4:00 p.m.), February 7 (11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.), February 8 (3:00–4:00 p.m.), February 11 (4:00–5:00 p.m.), and February 12 (4:00–5:00 p.m.). Each tour runs 60 minutes, capped at 17 people, meeting at the information desk. Participation requires a temporary exhibition ticket and a program ticket costing $4.10. The tour explores how a childhood illness that robbed Tihanyi of his hearing nudged him to reinvent sound as color and silence as form. Without academic training, he built a fiercely independent visual language that made him a founding member of The Eight (Nyolcak) and a standout of 20th‑century Hungarian painting.
“Phenomenon: That was Lajos Tihanyi”
Art historian Blanka Bán leads a deep-dive tour on January 30 (4:00–5:00 p.m.), focusing on Tihanyi’s rise from Budapest’s bourgeois milieu to a defining force of early modernism. He moved through phases shaped by wherever he lived and looked: the color-soaked experiments of his beginnings, the nature-centric lessons of Nagybánya, and then the art worlds of Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and New York. Expression, Cubist structure, and abstraction all surface in his canvases, while each era remains unmistakably his. Expect lively answers to sharp questions: What career did his parents imagine for him? Why did he sometimes paint both sides of a canvas? What did contemporaries say about his personality, and how did that character seep into his portraits? How did he leap from Fauvist color into nonfigurative work? Full-price tickets cost $20.20, discount tickets $11.50, with a 20-person cap. Meet at the ground-floor entrance to the exhibition.
Take the tour from your sofa
On February 3 (7:00–8:00 p.m.), the museum brings the show home with an online guided tour on Zoom. It mirrors the on-site experience and, for a week afterward, grants independent access to the virtual space to zoom in on works and read wall texts up close. The fee is $4.10 per person, with a maximum of 90 participants. Length: 60 minutes.
Tihanyi, the restless charmer
On February 5 (5:00–6:00 p.m.), art manager Nóra Winkler and art historian Tünde Topor co-host a spirited tour: Lajos Tihanyi, the Restless Charmer. Tihanyi’s life story was anything but linear, and parts of his legacy returned to Hungary in a roundabout way. A founding member of The Eight (Nyolcak), he “painted a whole gallery” of early 20th‑century Hungarian writers and artists with razor-sharp insight. With him, psychological portraiture marched into Hungarian painting, and those portraits double as studies in character. Alongside portraits of contemporaries, he often turned the brush on himself, while his final period is marked by riveting abstract compositions. What do these works—and the lives behind them—say to viewers today? Full-price tickets cost $20.20, discount tickets $11.50. Capacity: 36 people. Meet on the ground floor at the exhibition entrance. Tickets are sold online and on site, first come, first served. After the tour, the exhibition remains open for independent viewing until 6:45 p.m.
Budapest–Berlin–Paris: the road to abstraction
Writer and art historian Rita Halász maps Tihanyi’s stylistic journey on February 6 (4:00–5:00 p.m.). From café culture at the turn of the century to the Berlin avant‑garde and Parisian modernism, the tour follows the pivot from figurative composition to a pure language of color and form. Full-price tickets cost $20.20, discount tickets $11.50. Capacity: 20 people. Meet at the ground-floor exhibition entrance. Tickets available online and at the venue, first come, first served.
When and where
Budapest hosts the in-person programs on February 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, and 12. The venue is 1014 Budapest, Szent György Square (Szent György tér) 2. The organizers reserve the right to change times and programs.
More to do in February
The calendar spills well beyond Tihanyi: kids’ workshops like Recolor! – museum studio for children (various dates); Mama, look! – The Beauty of the Human Body (family-friendly); building tours from crypt to dome; and English- and Italian-language guided tours. Special events light up mid‑February: love‑themed programs on the 14th, a music-led tour with Ádám Bősze and Gábor Bellák, and Gergely Barki’s bonus lecture, Two or None: Doublings and Gaps in the Oeuvre of Lajos Tihanyi. There are also deep looks at the art of Adolf Fényes (Fényes Adolf), nude sculpture at the turn of the century, preschooler sessions like How Colorful!, and curator-led tours such as The Taste of Sunshine with art historian Edit Plesznivy on February 28.
Practicalities
– Core guided tour fee: $4.10 with a valid temporary exhibition ticket. Duration: 60 minutes. Max 17 people. Meeting point: information desk.
– Blanka Bán tour: $20.20 full, $11.50 discount. Max 20. Ground-floor entrance.
– Online tour (Zoom): $4.10 per person. Max 90. Length: 60 minutes. One week of virtual access afterward.
– Nóra Winkler & Tünde Topor tour: $20.20 full, $11.50 discount. Max 36. Ground-floor entrance. Exhibition open until 6:45 p.m. after the tour.
– Rita Halász tour: $20.20 full, $11.50 discount. Max 20. Ground-floor entrance.
Booking is available online and on site, first come, first served. Add events to your bucket list, set alerts, and plan a February steeped in color, psychology, and the fearless experiments of a painter who turned silence into vision.
