Curator’s tour in English by Réka Fazakas in the exhibiton of Nándor Wagner

Cura­tor’s tour in Eng­lish by Réka Fa­za­kas in „The phi­lo­sop­her sculp­tor” ex­hi­bit­on by Nán­dor Wag­ner
Wag­ner’s in many ways ext­ra­or­di­nary ca­re­er can be di­vi­ded into three pe­ri­ods and lin­ked to three count­ri­es: Hun­gary, Swe­den and Japan. As a re­sult, he had to re­start his ar­tis­tic ca­re­er vir­tu­ally from scratch three times. The fo­un­tain sculp­tu­re tit­led Water-car­ri­er Girl, one of his works from his fledgling years in Hun­gary and un­ve­i­led in Du­na­új­vá­ros in 1955, can still be seen but his other mo­nu­men­tal open-air sculp­tu­ral works were only erec­ted after his death thanks to the eff­orts of the Ja­pa­ne­se-Hun­ga­ri­an Aca­de­mia Hum­a­na Fo­un­da­ti­on Ma­nag­ing the Leg­acy of Nán­dor Wag­ner. In 1956 Wag­ner emig­ra­ted to Swe­den, with nu­me­rous sculp­tu­res in pub­lic spa­ces at­test­ing to the im­por­tance of this pe­ri­od. Among ot­hers, he erec­ted a me­mo­ri­al to the Po­lish vic­tims of World War II and mo­del­led Mar­tin the wild goose from Selma La­ger­löf’s child­ren’s book The Won­der­ful Ad­vent­ures of Nils. To­get­her with the fine ar­tist Akiya­ma Chiyo, his se­cond wife, whom he met in Swe­den, he re­lo­ca­ted to Japan in 1969, where they built their own home and stu­dio; this comp­lex also con­ta­ined a tea­hou­se – re­con­struc­ted in our ex­hi­bit­ion – com­bi­ning ele­ments of both Wes­tern and Ea­s­tern cul­tu­res. Wag­ner’s most well-known ma­s­ter­pi­e­ce, Phi­lo­sophi­cal Gar­den, was ina­u­gu­ra­ted on Gel­lért Hill in Bu­da­pest in 2011. This sculp­tu­ral en­semb­le in­vi­ting everyone for me­di­ta­ti­on was con­ce­i­ved in the spi­rit of “bet­ter un­der­stand­ing each other”. With the rep­re­s­en­ta­tions of the fo­un­ders of mo­not­he­is­tic re­li­gions and phi­lo­sop­hers, Nán­dor Wag­ner so­ught to find the very thing that con­nects all of us, people. The rep­li­cas of sculp­tu­res disp­la­yed at the focus of our ex­hi­bit­ion were made using the most ad­van­ced 3D print­ing tech­no­logy and, this time too, in­vi­te vi­si­tors to come and think to­get­her.

Re­g­istra­ti­on: https://​forms.​gle/​KWg​42LX​qWLf​j5vz​e9

Ad­mis­si­on: with a daily ex­hi­bit­ion tic­ket