Opening: 17 March 2026, 6 PM
Anna MARK studied in Budapest, graduated from the College of Fine Arts, and in the 1950s in Hungary, she dreamed of becoming a painter in Paris. In 1959, she settled in the French capital. She was able to see and experience 20th-century contemporary art, which she had previously only known from reproductions. The many new experiences liberated her, and she began to experiment, searching for her own artistic voice. She worked with oil paints, boldly creating large-scale paintings. Her painterly oeuvre in the classical sense consists of less than a hundred paintings, which are are not particularly well known. Only a few of them have been seen by the public in Hungary, and some of the pieces on display here are making their debut.
Abandoning the surrealism that was popular in Hungary at the time and the imperative to tell a narrative, she turned to abstract expression, since what was forbidden in Budapest was permitted in Paris. Her oil paintings, like her other works, are characterized by lyricism and construction, and the inevitable ingredient of mystery. Her oil paintings are surprising, speaking in the voices of Klee, Ernst, and Szentendre, attracting the viewer with their sparkling colors, rich detail, delicacy, and fragility.
Mária Árvai