Győző Somogyi landscapes

From July 16 to August 27, the Ernst Museum is organising an exhibition for Győző Somogyi. Through landscapes from his various creative periods, it presents the artist's path through life, not forgetting a new genre he has brought into being: the black and white screen prints called fine art maps, which can also be perceived as a kind of landscape.

Győző Somogyi occupies a special place in 20th century Hungarian art. He does not belong to a single school of painting or group. He works with traditional tools and genres, the majority of his work consisting of panel paintings, screen prints and tint-drawings.

Somogyi had an exhibition at the Ernst Museum in 1992, but while at the time, we tried to present a comprehensive picture of his oeuvre, this exhibition places an explicit emphasis on landscapes.

When he started out in the seventies, Somogyi worked mainly on graphics; since the eighties, when he moved from the city to the hills above Lake Balaton, he has turned to the intense colours of paintings evoking Csontváry. Since that time, tradition and the search for one's roots have become ever more important for him. In recent years, he has focussed his interest on Hungarian history and has painted pictures with a national theme in particular.

The exhibition taking place in the large hall of the Ernst Museum is showing some 40 large paintings and 30 graphic works and attempts to present the two different forms of landscapes through Somogyi's art: the landscapes in the traditional sense, showing the beauty of the Balaton hills, as well as the artistic maps he has invented.

A catalogue of Győző Somogyi's oeuvre will be published during the exhibition.