The Budapest Museum of Fine Arts commemorates Mihály Munkácsy and exhibits his masterpieces

More than a hundred paintings, sketches, archival photographs, personal relics and contemporary works by the painter Mihály Munkácsy They are exhibited in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapestin an exhibition inaugurated this November 27.

‘Munkácsy – the story of a global success’ presents the painter’s main works of art in six rooms. They expose themselves iconic works of realismsuch as ‘The Gravedigger’, and great paintings, such as ‘Golgotha’, transferred from Debrecen to the Szépmuvészet museum.

The exhibition, and the guided tour, highlights the star that Munkácsy was in his time, but also demonstrates that his talent was not the only factor that contributed to its success.

“In addition to his extraordinary artistic gifts, he needed patrons: the French wife who introduced him to Parisian society and the art dealer who inspired his themes,” László Baán, general director of the National Gallery of Fine Arts, explained to ‘Euronews’.

“It was Sedelmayer’s idea paint the life of Jesusfor example, and not just any life, but gigantic works, which he later showed in traveling exhibitions throughout Europe and America, where they were seen by millions of people, and then, of course, Munkácsy was so inundated with commissions that he was the most expensive of its time,” adds Baán.

The great exhibitions of Munkácsy

It was not easy to obtain the paintings from foreign private and public collections for the exhibition, but curator Réka Krasznai says the biggest logistical challenge was the gigantic paintings ‘Golgotha’ and ‘The Conquest of Hungary’, which were transported from Debrecen and Parliament to the exhibition site.

At the same time, they were able take advantage of the two major exhibitions of Munkácsy to date, that of 1952 at the Mucsarnok and that of 2005 at the National Gallery.

“In fact, I tried to combine the teachings of these two exhibitions in such a way as to show the entire work, from the great works of the National Gallery to the great monumental works, passing through the latent masterpieces and hidden in private collections“, explains Commissioner Réka Krasznai Krasznai to ‘Euronews’.

The exhibition can be seen at the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts until the end of March 2025.