Bookmarks – Revisiting Hungarian art of the 1960s and 1970s

Joint project by acb, Kisterem and Vintage Galéria

Curator: András Szántó

Bookmarks – Revisiting Hungarian art of the 1960s and 1970s is the exhibition held at The Vinyl Factory, Soho, London, on the occasion of Frieze Week, 4–14 October 2018. The group exhibition features a selection of about 70 emblematic works by 35 artists of the Hungarian neo-avant-garde, woking with a wide range of media.

Fourth in a series of shows with the same theme, the exhibition is part of a wider programme to raise awareness about Hungarian artists during the socialist period, who were not able to gain an appropriate international recognition due to the Iron Curtain.

The Bookmarks collaboration emerged from the need to reposition Hungarian neo-avant-garde art within the art-historical canon. Due to the lack of resources in local public institutions, this had to be initiated by private galleries that were professionally prepared for this task and mission. Research, exhibitions and publications focusing on the 1960s and 1970s, organised by acb, Kisterem and Vintage, have given this period of Hungarian art visibility. Without pretending to give an exhaustive presentation of Hungarian neo-avant-garde art, the ‘Bookmarks’ program aims to mark and show the important pages of an imaginary book on the past decades of Hungarian art. Previous Bookmarks exhibitions have included Gábor Altorjay, Gábor Attalai, Imre Bak, Miklós Erdély, Tibor Hajas, Károly Hopp-Halász, György Jovánovics, Tamás Kaszás, Ilona Keserü, Ádám Kokesch, Katalin Ladik, László Lakner, Little Warsaw, János Major, Dóra Maurer, István Nádler, Gábor Ősz, Géza Perneczky, Société Réaliste, Tamás Szentjóby, Dezső Szabó, Péter Szalay, Endre Tót, Gyula Várnai. Bookmarks exhibitions were organized by the three galleries in 2013 in Budapest, in 2015 in Cologne as a special exhibition at the Art Cologne and in Budapest in the frame of the 1st OFF-Biennale.