Ödön Márffy and his Muses

The Ernst Museum is organising an exhibition on the occasion of the 125th anniversary of Ödön Márffy's birth. He was one of the most significant representatives of the "Eights" group, which gathered the innovative painting endeavours of Hungarian art of the early twentieth century. The exhibition elaborates his whole oeuvre from a personal perspective.

The master, trained in France, is recorded in art literature as a colourist.

His favourite subjects as a painter were women. Representatives of the weaker sex accompany him throughout his whole oeuvre; thus Ady's ex-wife, Csinszka; then Zdenka Ticharich after her death; and his last wife Franciska (Cseszka) Hacker, served as the source of his inspiration. But there is also a portrait of Mrs Dezső Kosztolányi in the exhibition. Besides his portraits which reveal his gentle sensibility and his nudes, it is the exhibition's intention to show through his numerous self portraits, the changes taking place in his own personality.

Márffy had a close relationship with the Ernst Museum, indeed one can say that it was the art institution closest to him, since he showed his latest work to the public on these walls in group exhibition in 1925, 1928, 1930 and 1937 and in one-man exhibitions in 1946 and 1958. Since the exhibition at the Vigado Gallery in 1984, there has been no exhibition of Márffy's collected works.

The Márffy works known up to the present are only a part of the material that will be exhibited by the Ernst Museum. For example, the paintings of Cseszka could not be shown to a wider public due to the modesty of the widow. At the same time, works from many private collections will also be shown.