Hungary celebrates the 140th birthday of Lajos Tihanyi with a sweeping career exhibition in Budapest’s Castle District, at 1014 Budapest, Szent György Square (Szent György tér) 2. Nearly 200 works trace the path of a deaf visionary who forged a fiercely original language without academic training: blazing colors, taut lines, and abstraction that still feel urgent. Expect major paintings, graphic works, and intimate estate pieces. Guided tours run through January and early February 2026, including a Zoom event and an accessible tour with sign-language interpretation.
Rebel Forms, Bold Colors: The Core Tours
Rebel Forms, Bold Colors – The Art of Lajos Tihanyi anchors the schedule with 60-minute guided tours capped at 17 visitors. Tours require an exhibition ticket and a program ticket priced at 1,500 USD, with meet-up at the information desk. Dates:
– January 9, 2026, 16:00–17:00
– January 11, 15:00–16:00
– January 17, 15:00–16:00
– January 23, 16:00–17:00
– January 29, 16:00–17:00
– January 31, 15:00–16:00
– February 8, 15:00–16:00
Tihanyi lost his hearing at age eleven after meningitis and, in the silence, built a visual voice: concentrated, electric, and unafraid. His rise—without academic credentials—made him a standout of The Eight (Nyolcak) group and one of the most original painters of 20th-century Hungary.
Tihanyi 140: Curator Mariann Gergely’s Tour
January 15, 16:00–17:00. Curator Mariann Gergely charts the epic journey of a legacy that Hungarian audiences knew for decades only through black-and-white reproductions. Fifty-five years ago, Tihanyi’s estate took a dramatic route from Paris to the Hungarian National Gallery, making color, texture, and touch finally visible at home.
Tihanyi’s life was shadowed by personal tragedy. Deaf from childhood, with altered speech and reliance on lip-reading, he never attended art school. That isolation shaped a singular vision. As a young man in Nagybánya (Baia Mare), he mingled with painters and writers and moved confidently in the intellectual circles of his time. After emigrating in the winter of 1919, he never returned to Hungary. Before leaving, he was already established—he had a solo show in 1918 at the MA circle’s gallery linked to Lajos Kassák. He lived in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, and New York before returning to Paris in the 1930s.
His most significant strand: portraits of cultural icons. He captured Hungarian figures such as Lajos Kassák, Lajos Fülep, Endre Ady, Mihály Babits, Józsi Jenő Tersánszky, Dezső Kosztolányi, Pál Pátzay, and György Bölöni, alongside international notables including Ivan Goll, Diego Rivera, Tristan Tzara, Marinetti, and Brassaï. Critics have compared his expressive portrait intensity to Oskar Kokoschka’s. In his final years, he turned to dynamic abstraction, joining the international group Abstraction-Création in 1932.
Tickets: full price 7,400 USD; discounted 4,200 USD. Maximum 17 participants. Meet on the ground floor, at the exhibition entrance.
The Person Behind the Palette: Gergely Barki’s Tour
January 16, 16:00–17:00. Art historian Gergely Barki leads an unconventional tour digging into the man behind the canvases. Tihanyi, despite hearing loss and speech challenges, moved easily in society, with many friends—and enemies. He lived alone, never entering a long-term partnership, perhaps due to both his circumstances and a difficult temperament. In all relationships he remained bluntly honest and true to himself. How does that interior life echo across his brushwork? Barki connects the personal to the painterly in an hour of sharp insight.
Tickets: full price 7,400 USD; discounted 4,200 USD. Max 20. Meet on the ground floor, at the exhibition entrance. Tickets available online and on-site, first come, first served.
Online Tour on Hungarian Culture Day
January 22, 19:00–20:00, on Zoom. Explore Tihanyi’s major paintings, graphics, and personal items from home. The one-hour guided session opens the door to a one-week self-guided virtual visit afterward: zoom into artworks, linger over wall texts, and explore the layout at your own pace.
Participation fee: 1,500 USD per person. Max 90 participants. Duration: 60 minutes.
Accessible Tour With Sign-Language Interpretation
January 25, 15:00–16:00. Rebel Forms, Bold Colors becomes a truly shared space: Hungarian Sign Language interpreters ensure hearing, hard-of-hearing, and deaf visitors can experience the tour together. Content remains identical to the standard program.
Entry requires an exhibition ticket and a 1,500 USD program ticket. Members of SINOSZ receive free admission and participation, with prior registration required by January 20. Duration: 60 minutes. Max 17. Meet at the information desk.
Budapest–Berlin–Paris: The Road to Abstraction
February 6, 16:00–17:00. Writer and art historian Rita Halász guides a narrative tour: from turn-of-the-century café culture to Berlin’s avant-garde and Parisian modernism, tracing how Tihanyi moved from figuration toward a pure visual language of color and form. It’s a brisk itinerary through the forces that reshaped his palette and sharpened his geometry.
Tickets: full price 7,400 USD; discounted 4,200 USD. Max 20. Meet on the ground floor, at the exhibition entrance. Tickets available online and on-site, first come, first served.
The museum notes that images are under the copyright of the Museum of Fine Arts.
