With a name like that, who wouldn’t want to go? Explore paradise, or at least the idea of it, with the likes of Rodin and Renoir, Moore and Matisse, Daumier and Degas at the newest exhibition at the Hungarian National Gallery.
Stroll literally and figuratively through the longing for a perfect world that never existed, harmony of man and nature, heaven and hell, complete happiness, and perfection in human relationships. Stop in front of In the Time of Harmony, by Paul Signac, a pointillist painting subtitled The Golden Age Has Not Passed, It Is Still to Come. Enter the darker, more sinister room to see Rodin’s John the Baptist, a severed head with mouth open, as if he wanted to speak… Emerge into the World of Bliss, where everyday pleasures are portrayed in works like Kees van Dongen’s The Roadside Café, and in the Adam and Eve room, gaze upon The Eternal Idol, Rodin’s expression of man’s eternal desire for woman, and you will have caught a glimpse of perfection.
The exhibition represents a kind of homecoming for the collection, which has never been seen in Hungary but belongs to the descendants of Elizabeth and Alexander Kasser, a Hungarian couple who in addition to collecting art, helped save the lives of hundreds of Jews with Raoul Wallenberg during World War II. They settled in the US, and their children Mary V. Mochary and Michael Kasser are now responsible for bringing this wonderful collection to The Hungarian National Gallery. With audio guides in English!
Through May 2
Hungarian National Gallery – Buda Castle, Building A 1014 Budapest, Szent György tér 2. Tel.: +36.20.439.7325 www.nemzetigaleria.hu