The Hungarian National Gallery is rolling out a packed season of exhibitions, guided tours, family programs, festivals, and concerts that trace the rise and reinvention of Hungarian visual art. As the country’s largest public collection dedicated to this story, the museum is also doubling down on education: creative clubs, art pedagogy sessions, and summer camps offer hands-on immersion for kids. This winter’s headline act is a sweeping tribute to Lajos Tihanyi, marking 140 years since his birth and unraveling how a deaf painter who skipped academic training found a radical visual language that made him one of the most original members of the Nyolcak (The Eight) and a cornerstone of 20th-century Hungarian painting.
Rebel Forms, Daring Colors: Lajos Tihanyi’s Art
From January 23 through early February, the museum spotlights Tihanyi’s life and work with a special retrospective featuring key paintings, drawings, and personal objects. Losing his hearing as a child, Tihanyi turned silence into color and form, channeling a distinct voice in the language of paint. He moved from the fauves’ punchy palette to nonfigurative abstraction, building a career that spanned Budapest, Berlin, and Paris, and reshaped how modern Hungarian art speaks to the world. Several dates include guided tours that delve into his process and evolution, alongside an accessible sign language tour on January 25.
Lectures, Deep Dives, and Double-Sided Paintings
On January 24 in Budapest, art historian Gergely Barki unpacks “Two or None. Doublings and Hiatuses in Lajos Tihanyi’s Work,” probing the gaps, returns, and double versions that run through the artist’s practice. January 30 brings “Phenomenon: That Was Lajos Tihanyi,” a guided tour by art historian Blanka Bán that asks what career path his parents imagined for him, why he painted on both sides of some canvases, how contemporaries described his personality, and how he captured them in portraits—while tracing the arc from high-chroma fauvism to abstraction.
Kids in the Galleries: Faces, Snow, and Sleuthing
Families get their own gateway into modernism. On January 24, “Adventure in the Gallery – Strange Faces” offers age-tailored tours: 10:30–11:15 for 6–9-year-olds and 11:30–12:15 for ages 10–13. January 27’s “Toddlers – Snowflake Dance” bundles up the littlest visitors for a winter romp through the National Gallery: discover the forest in white, find color in snowy landscapes, and sing, tell stories, and dance with the snowflakes.
January’s “Recolor It!” kids’ workshop turns young visitors into detectives on January 28. The gallery becomes a mystery-scape as participants follow Tihanyi’s trail, examine dozens of works, hunt for hidden details, and piece together a visual puzzle. The sleuthing segues into making: staged “forgeries,” composite portraits, and photo manipulations let kids test artistic tactics while cracking the case.
Silence Speaks, Beauty of the Body
Two “Mama, look!” sessions connect art and insight for parents and kids. On January 29, “Silence Speaks” explores how Tihanyi turned deafness into an artistic advantage, forging a singular aesthetic. On February 5, “The Beauty of the Body” surveys the human form across centuries, through the freshly renewed exhibition Nude Sculptures from the Turn of the Century, showing how ideals and body images shift with the times.
The Eight Take the Stage
Tihanyi’s exhibition opens onto the legacy of the Nyolcak (The Eight). On February 1, a scheduled tour traces the group—introduced as the Keresők (Seekers) and active from 1909 to 1912 through three landmark shows—whose brief, blazing run jolted Hungary’s cultural and artistic life as forcefully as any scientific or technological revolution.
Gallery Sundays and Beyond
Music meets art on February 1, when the Albert Schweitzer Chamber Choir and Orchestra perform in the first-floor dome hall. Building tours also peel back the layers of the former royal palace. On February 8, “From Crypt to Dome” reveals the Habsburg Palatine Crypt, the panoramic dome, and other architectural gems while narrating the Hungarian National Gallery’s own history and collections.
Online Tours and French-Language Access
Can’t make it in person? Tune in from home. February 3 offers an online guided tour of the Tihanyi show, while February 10 spotlights painter Adolf Fényes with a virtual walkthrough of his memorial exhibition. For French speakers, February 8 hosts “Budapest–Berlin–Paris. L’art de Lajos Tihanyi,” a guided visit to the Tihanyi exhibition en français.
Berlin, Paris, and the Road to Abstraction
Writer and art historian Rita Halász leads two tours: January 31 brings “Concrete Embroidery,” a subjective take on the works and themes on view; February 6 follows “Budapest–Berlin–Paris: Lajos Tihanyi’s Road to Abstraction,” tracing how café culture around the turn of the century, the Berlin avant-garde, and Parisian modernism shaped his style, and how he moved from figurative compositions to a pure language of colors and forms.
Adolf Fényes, Nudes, and Making Art Together
February 7 features a guided tour of “Pictures of Silence. Adolf Fényes (1867–1945)” and related works in the permanent collection. The same day, “Create! – Naked Reality” tackles one of art’s oldest themes: the human body, from the 19th century to today. After the gallery walk, visitors turn their own bodies into both subject and tool by making body prints.
Tihanyi, Again and Again
The Tihanyi retrospective anchors the calendar on January 29 and 31, and February 7 and 8, with multiple guided tours inviting visitors back to see new facets in the same works. On February 5, art manager Nóra Winkler and art historian Tünde Topor co-lead “Lajos Tihanyi, the Restless Charmer,” a portrait of the artist’s magnetism and momentum.
Venetian Masks for the Tiniest Visitors
Capping the early February lineup, “Toddlers – Venetian Carnival” on February 10 celebrates the most elegant masked balls with a playful, child-friendly twist—because even the smallest gallery-goers deserve a little spectacle.
February Workshops for Young Time Travelers
The “Recolor It!” workshop returns on February 4 to ask how people once lived and what pictures say about the past. Kids time-travel through genre scenes, portraits, and old photos to see what people wore, used, played with, and dreamed of. Inspired by the works, they draw, paint, make comics, and invent their own stories—proof that galleries aren’t just for looking; they’re for making, too.
