Budapest marks the 140th anniversary of Lajos Tihanyi’s birth with a sweeping career exhibition and a packed program of guided tours—both on-site and online—showcasing nearly two hundred works by the Hungarian modernist who forged a fearless path from expressive color to abstraction. Set at 2 Szent György Square (Szent György tér 2.) in the historic heart of Buda, the show assembles his most important paintings and graphics alongside intimate estate objects. Deaf from childhood, Tihanyi tuned the silence into color and form, and without formal academic training he built a visual language that made him a founding force of The Eight (Nyolcak) group and a singular voice in 20th-century Hungarian painting.
Rebellious Forms, Bold Colors
The core guided tour series, Rebellious Forms, Bold Colors – The Art of Lajos Tihanyi, offers hour-long introductions to his world, with stops through different periods where expressive brushwork, cubist structuring, and abstraction meet. Tours run on January 31 from 15:00 to 16:00, and continue on February 7 (11:00–12:00), February 8 (15:00–16:00), February 11 (16:00–17:00), and February 12 (16:00–17:00). Participation requires both the temporary exhibition ticket and a program ticket priced at $4.10 per person. Groups are capped at 17. The meeting point is the information desk. Duration: 60 minutes.
“Phenomenon: That Was Lajos Tihanyi”
Art historian Blanka Bán leads a deep-dive tour on January 30 from 16:00 to 17:00, tracing Tihanyi’s journey from Budapest’s bourgeois milieu to the avant-garde circuits of Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and New York. Illness took his hearing early, but not his drive: lacking academic schooling, he cultivated a free, experimental painterly voice. The session explores how his early color-rich trials evolved through the nature-centered lessons of Nagybánya (Baia Mare) into a vision shaped by European modernism. Expect answers to disarming questions: What career did his parents imagine for him? Why are some canvases painted on both sides? How did contemporaries describe his personality, and how did his psychological portraits reflect it back onto them? How did he move from fauvist color to nonfigurative painting? Full-price tickets cost $20.40; discounted $11.60. Maximum 20 participants. Meeting point: ground floor, exhibition entrance.
Online Tour: See It From Home
On February 3 from 19:00 to 20:00, an online tour opens the doors to Tihanyi’s legacy for viewers everywhere. Hosted on Zoom, it revisits his evolution—silence transmuted into color, discipline into daring—while giving participants a week of independent access to the exhibition’s virtual space afterward. You can zoom in on works, read gallery texts, and explore the layout on your own. Price: $4.10 per person. Capacity: 90. Length: 60 minutes.
The Restless Charmer
On February 5 from 17:00 to 18:00, art manager Nóra Winkler and art historian Tünde Topor co-host Lajos Tihanyi: The Restless Charmer, an hour that threads together his unruly life path, unconventional career, and an estate that returned home by a circuitous route. A founder of The Eight (Nyolcak), he painted an entire gallery of early 20th-century Hungarian literary and artistic luminaries with piercing insight. Critics say psychological portraiture marched into Hungarian painting with him; his portraits are visual case studies. He frequently turned the lens on himself, and the late abstract compositions reveal a final, fearless leap into pure form. What do these works and their stories say to us now? Full-price $20.40; discounted $11.60. Maximum 36. Meeting point: ground floor, exhibition entrance. After the tour, the show remains open until 18:45. Tickets available online and on-site, first come, first served.
Budapest–Berlin–Paris: The Road to Abstraction
Writer and art historian Rita Halász guides visitors on February 6 from 16:00 to 17:00 through Tihanyi’s stylistic arc, from café-culture Budapest to Berlin’s avant-garde and Parisian modernism. Follow his shift from figurative scenes to a language of pure color and form. Full-price $20.40; discounted $11.60. Maximum 20. Meeting point: ground floor, exhibition entrance. Tickets online or on-site in order of arrival.
Calendar Snapshots
Key Budapest dates cluster across the first half of February: 02.03 (online tour), 02.05 (The Restless Charmer), 02.06 (Budapest–Berlin–Paris), 02.07 and 02.08 (Rebellious Forms… sessions), and 02.11–02.12 (further guided hours). The museum’s wider February schedule spans kids’ workshops, English and Italian tours, concerts, lectures, and thematic walks—look out for Rebellious Forms, Bold Colors – The Art of Lajos Tihanyi | Guided tour in English on February 13; Love Is in the Air events on February 14; and curator talks on Adolf Fényes (Fényes Adolf) later in the month. Listings note programs like The Eight (Nyolcak) – Pre-scheduled Guided Tour (Előre meghirdetett tárlatvezetés), Sunday Choir Concert (Vasárnapi kóruskoncert), and more, including visits for toddlers and family-friendly sessions.
At the Venue
The exhibition unfolds in the city’s historic core at 2 Szent György Square (Szent György tér 2.), easily reached from the Buda Castle precincts. The surrounding area is rich with UNESCO-listed landmarks and cafés, while hotels along the Buda bank of the Danube and within the Castle District place visitors a 10-minute walk from the Royal Palace, Matthias Church, and Fisherman’s Bastion. Nearby Chain Bridge links over to Pest’s business quarter, shopping streets, coffeehouses, and wine bars.
Why Tihanyi Matters Now
Tihanyi’s career enriches the story of Hungarian modernism: he balanced expressive thrust with structural rigor, let cities reshape his gaze, and never stopped testing the canvas. He painted the people around him with psychological acuity, doubled down on experimentation by using both sides of supports, and in his late years built abstract compositions that feel startlingly current. Whether you step into the gallery or log in from home, the program’s set of tours, voices, and vantage points makes this anniversary a live, multifaceted conversation—about color, form, and the enduring electricity of a restless eye.
