The life’s work of Lajos Tihanyi, a daring master of Hungarian Expressionism and the avant-garde, takes over 2 Szent György Square in Budapest with nearly two hundred works: landmark paintings, graphic art, and intimate estate objects. This bold, color-charged retrospective amplifies the voice of a groundbreaking artist who, after losing his hearing as a child, forged a visual language out of silence. The show is accompanied by a full program of on-site guided tours, special curator walks, an online tour, and an accessible session with sign-language interpretation. Note: the promotional image is under the copyright of the Museum of Fine Arts.
Rebel Forms, Bold Colors – Meet Tihanyi
The museum celebrates the 140th anniversary of Lajos Tihanyi with a sweeping retrospective spotlighting his most important paintings, works on paper, and personal belongings. Without academic training, and cut off from sound since childhood due to meningitis at age eleven, he developed an exceptional visual language that made him one of the most original voices in 20th-century Hungarian painting and a pivotal figure of The Eight (Nyolcak). Join the guided tour to dive into his color alchemy and formal experiments.
Guided tours require a ticket to the temporary exhibition and an additional program ticket priced at 1,500 HUF (about 4.00 USD). Duration: 60 minutes. Maximum capacity: 17 visitors. Meeting point: information desk.
Upcoming sessions:
– 2025.12.27. 11:00–12:00
– 2025.12.28. 11:00–12:00
– 2025.12.29. 11:00–12:00
– 2025.12.30. 11:00–12:00
– 2026.01.09. 16:00–17:00
– 2026.01.11. 15:00–16:00
– 2026.01.17. 15:00–16:00
– 2026.01.23. 16:00–17:00
– 2026.01.29. 16:00–17:00
– 2026.01.31. 15:00–16:00
TIHANYI 140: Curator Mariann Gergely’s Walk
2026.01.15. 16:00–17:00
Tihanyi’s colorful legacy, long seen only in black-and-white reproductions in Hungary until the 1970s, made a dramatic journey: his estate arrived from Paris to the Hungarian National Gallery fifty-five years ago under adventurous circumstances. His life and art were shadowed and sharpened by a personal tragedy—profound deafness from age eleven. His voice changed, speech was difficult, he lip-read, and he avoided academic schools, shaping a distinctive painting and drawing style rooted in a singular outlook on the world.
As a young man he visited Nagybánya (Baia Mare), befriended painters and writers, and moved among the intellectual circles of his time. In the winter of 1919, he emigrated and never returned to Hungary. Already recognized at home—he had a solo show in 1918 at the MA circle’s gallery run by Lajos Kassák—he continued to create in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, New York, and then again in Paris in the 1930s.
His art connects directly to international avant-garde currents; in Berlin and Paris he knew leading figures of the movement. His most significant strand is a series of portraits of notable personalities. Alongside Hungarian icons like Lajos Kassák, Lajos Fülep, Endre Ady, Mihály Babits, Józsi Jenő Tersánszky, Dezső Kosztolányi, Pál Pátzay, and György Bölöni, he painted members of the global art scene, including Ivan Goll, Diego Rivera, Tristan Tzara, Marinetti, and Brassaï. Many compared the expressive intensity of his portraiture to Oskar Kokoschka. In his final years he turned to striking abstraction, joining the international group Abstraction-Création in 1932.
Full-price ticket: 7,400 HUF (about 19.80 USD). Discounted: 4,200 HUF (about 11.20 USD). Maximum: 17 visitors. Meeting point: ground floor, exhibition entrance.
The Human Behind the Palette: Gergely Barki’s Tour
2026.01.16. 16:00–17:00
Art historian Gergely Barki leads an offbeat tour through TIHANYI 140, tracing the personality behind the canvases. Unraveling Tihanyi’s character is as gripping as analyzing his paintings. Despite hearing loss and speech difficulties, he was a social figure with many friends—and enemies—yet he lived essentially alone. He never formed a lasting relationship, likely due to both his disability and a difficult temperament, but he remained candid and authentic in all his connections. How did that inner landscape surface in the work? Did personal ties shape the painting? This tour pursues those answers.
Full-price ticket: 7,400 HUF (about 19.80 USD). Discounted: 4,200 HUF (about 11.20 USD). Maximum: 20 visitors. Meeting point: ground floor, exhibition entrance. Tickets are sold online and on-site on a first-come, first-served basis.
Join from Home: Online Tour
2026.01.22. 19:00–20:00
Celebrate the 140th with a live online guided tour on Zoom. See the artist’s most important paintings, works on paper, and personal items, and learn how he built a unique visual voice without academic schooling. After the session, enjoy a full week of self-guided access to a virtual version of the exhibition: zoom into works and explore the gallery content at your own pace.
Participation fee: 1,500 HUF per person (about 4.00 USD). Maximum: 90 participants. Length: 60 minutes.
Accessible Tour with Sign-Language Interpretation
2026.01.25. 15:00–16:00
Rebel Forms, Bold Colors returns with a session designed to bring hearing, hard-of-hearing, and deaf visitors together. The program is delivered with sign-language interpretation and the full content of the regular tour.
Participation requires both the temporary exhibition ticket and the guided-tour program ticket: 1,500 HUF (about 4.00 USD). For members of SINOSZ, admission and program participation are free with prior registration by January 20. Duration: 60 minutes. Maximum: 17 visitors. Meeting point: information desk.
This expansive show of nearly two hundred works synthesizes the path of an artist who, cut off from sound, built a world of radical color and form—and carried that intensity into portraits of poets and revolutionaries, into the avant-garde circles of Paris and Berlin, and into the abstractions of his later years. In Budapest, the voice he found in paint speaks loudly.
