Budapest marks the 140th birthday of Lajos Tihanyi with a sweeping retrospective featuring nearly two hundred works: major paintings, incisive graphics, and intimate estate objects. One of Hungarian Expressionism and the avant-garde’s restless experimenters, Tihanyi forged bold color harmonies and abstract structures without academic training, building a fiercely independent visual language. He lost his hearing in childhood but turned silence into saturated color and sculpted form, finding his own voice in paint. At 2 Szent György Square (Szent György tér 2.), visitors can explore his life’s work through multiple guided tours—on-site and online—delving into his persona, peers, and path from Fauvism’s hot palette to nonfigurative abstraction.
Core Guided Tours and Practical Details
Rebellious Forms, Bold Colors – The Art of Lajos Tihanyi runs from January 29 through mid-February as a guided exhibition visit. Sessions last 60 minutes, are capped at 17 people, and meet at the information desk. Entry requires a temporary exhibition ticket plus a tour program ticket of 1500 Ft (about 4 USD). Times: Jan 29, 4:00–5:00 p.m.; Jan 31, 3:00–4:00 p.m.; Feb 7, 11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.; Feb 8, 3:00–4:00 p.m.; Feb 11, 4:00–5:00 p.m.; Feb 12, 4:00–5:00 p.m.
“Phenomenon: That Was Lajos Tihanyi”
On January 30, 4:00–5:00 p.m., art historian Blanka Bán leads a deep dive into the artist who co-founded The Eight (Nyolcak), a key force in early 20th-century Hungarian modernism. Raised in a Budapest bourgeois milieu, Tihanyi lost his hearing young after a serious illness but pressed on without formal studies, turning that lack of schooling into freedom and experimentation. His trajectory mirrors his environments: early color-rich experiments, the naturalism of Nagybánya (Baia Mare), and later, the art worlds of Paris, Vienna, Berlin, and New York, which all sharpened his approach. Expressionist intensity, Cubist construction, and abstraction all surface, yet his independence and durability remain constant. Expect answers to sharp questions: What career did his parents imagine? Why did he paint some canvases on both sides? What did contemporaries say about his personality—and how did he mirror them in psychological portraits? How did he move from Fauvist brights to nonfigurative canvases? Full-price tickets are 7400 Ft (about 20 USD), discounted 4200 Ft (about 11 USD). Max 20. Meet at the ground-floor exhibition entrance.
Online Tour: See the Show From Home
On February 3, 7:00–8:00 p.m., join an online guided tour via Zoom for 1500 Ft (about 4 USD), up to 90 participants. After the live hour, a virtual gallery stays open for a week so you can roam solo, zoom in on works, and study texts from your couch. This format revisits Tihanyi’s biography—the deaf artist who distilled silence into color—and unpacks how his idiosyncratic language set him apart within The Eight (Nyolcak) and 20th-century Hungarian painting.
The Restless Charmer: Nóra Winkler and Tünde Topor
On February 5, 5:00–6:00 p.m., art manager Nóra Winkler and art historian Tünde Topor co-host a session titled Lajos Tihanyi, the Restless Charmer. It traces an extraordinary life, unconventional career, and a legacy that made a dramatic return home. A founding member of The Eight (Nyolcak), Tihanyi painted what feels like an entire gallery of early 1900s Hungarian literary and artistic figures with remarkable acuity. He brought the psychological portrait into Hungarian painting; his heads aren’t just likenesses but crisp psychological studies. Alongside portraits of contemporaries, he often fixed his own face on canvas, and in his last period, took a striking turn to abstraction. What do these works and stories say to us now? Full-price 7400 Ft (about 20 USD), discounted 4200 Ft (about 11 USD), max 36. Meet at the ground-floor entrance. Tickets sold online and on-site, first come, first served. After the tour, the exhibition stays open for individual viewing until 6:45 p.m.
Budapest–Berlin–Paris: The Road to Abstraction
On February 6, 4:00–5:00 p.m., writer and art historian Rita Halász maps how café culture at the turn of the century, Berlin’s avant-garde, and Parisian modernism shaped Tihanyi’s style. Follow the arc from figurative compositions to a distilled language of pure color and form. Full-price 7400 Ft (about 20 USD), discounted 4200 Ft (about 11 USD), max 20. Meet at the ground-floor entrance. Tickets online and on-site, first come, first served.
Dates at a Glance
Budapest hosts all listed events. Key dates: Jan 29–31; Feb 3, 5–8, 11–12. The organizers reserve the right to change programs and times.
More Cultural Picks Around the Same Time
The venue’s wider calendar stacks related programs across winter: children’s workshops like Color It Again!; parent-and-child sessions such as Look, Mom! – The Silence Speaks and The Beauty of the Human Body; choral concerts; pre-announced tours of The Eight (Nyolcak); thematic atelier events like Create! – Naked Reality; walks from crypt to dome; English and Italian guided tours; a music-led tour with Ádám Bősze and Gábor Bellák; Valentine’s offerings including Love Is in the Air and The Most Beautiful Hungarian Love Paintings; Gergely Barki’s bonus lecture Double or Nothing: Doublings and Gaps in Lajos Tihanyi’s Oeuvre; and curator-led tours for Adolf Fényes (Fényes Adolf). Many programs repeat through February with varied caps and formats.
In a single sweep, these tours and talks reveal Tihanyi’s many facets: the deaf child who listened through color, the co-founder who helped modernize Hungarian painting, the portraitist who made psyche visible, and the late-career abstractionist who pushed color and geometry toward a language of their own.
