A Storm in Europe [antikvár]

Foreword Ben Uri Gallery, The London Jewish Museum of Art, is delighted and honoured to host this important exhibition, A Storm in Europe: Béla Kádár, Hugó Scheiber and Der Sturm Gallery in Berlin. We are deeply grateful to Mariann Gergely, one of the world's foremost scholars on the works of Béla Kádár, of the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest for so kindly agreeing to curate the show, a major cooperation between the Ben Uri and Hungary's famous national museum. We are also indebted to Beáta Somfalvi and the staff of the Hungarian Cultural Centre in London, organisers of Magyar Magic: Hungary in Focus 2004, for their invaluable assistance in the co-ordination and support of this major exhibition. This is the first time that the works of the Hungarian-Jewish artists, Béla Kádár and Hugó Scheiber, have been shown side-by-side in the United Kingdom. Kádár and Scheiber were both celebrated in their day as pioneering artists of the European avant-garde and, as the essays in this catalogue attest, both came to prominence after receiving a joint exhibition in 1921 at Max Hevesi's Salon in Vienna. As a result of this increased exposure outside their native Budapest, both artists went on to receive solo shows at the now-legendary Der Sturm in Berlin during the 1920s, a gallery owned by the visionary promoter of the 'new', Herwarth Walden. This attention from one of Europe's most important curators and dealers of the visual arts in the first two decades of the twentieth century served to propel the artists to fame, although they ore perhaps less well known now than they once were. We fervently hope that A Storm in Europe will serve to bring these two artists, and their Hungarian colleagues shown alongside them at Der Sturm and in Storm in Europe, to the attention of a new generation of visual arts lovers in Britain. We also believe that this exhibition will serve to achieve a new critical and public recognition for these important Hungarian modernists, an attention that they richly deserve eighty years since they first rose to prominence in mainland Europe soon after the First World War. This important and wide-ranging exhibition is, following our show in 2002 on Ludwig and Else Meidner, the second in the museum's recent programme to explore the lives and work of influential international Jewish artists and their non-Jewish contemporaries. Again, the Ben Uri is hosting an exhibition that would not otherwise be seen in this country. Richard Aronowitz-Mercer David J Classer Director and Senior Curator Chairman November 2003