Twentieth Century Art [antikvár]

HISTORY OF THE DEPARTMENT OF MODERN ART T he Twentieth-century Collection in the Museum of Fine Arts was founded in 1952. These pictures had previously been housed in the Department of Modern Art of the Museum together with Hungárián paintings of the i9th and 2oth centuries. In 195 2 the Department of Modern Art was rearranged, Hungárián and non-Hungarian works were separated and a collection of Hungárián works was built up ready for transference to the Hungárián National Gallery. In 1957, with the establishment of the Hungárián National Gallery, the Department of Modern Sculpture was similarly rearranged. Twentieth-century European sculptures were transferred to the Department of Twentieth-century Art from 1952 to the end of 1968 in the care of István Genthon, an expert in the field of Hungárián art history. Compared with the Gallery of Old Masters or the Department of Prints and Drawings of the Museum of Fine Arts, the Department of Modern Art is not large. For when works by i9th-century and 2othcentury Hungárián and non-Hungarian artists were housed in one collection, priority was given to works of Hungárián origin. Works by foreign artists were purchased from time to time, but not so many as one might have wished. Thus during the early years of the Museum of Fine Arts there were many missed opportunities of acquiring masterpieces on which today one can scarcely set a price. Most of these works were bought when exhibitions of foreign art were held in Budapest, others were purchased from art dealers abroad. One year after the opening of the Museum of Fine Arts, in 1907, the National Sálon organized a spring exhibition of thirty-six works by Gauguin, five by Cézanne, two by Van Gogh and one by Manet, Emilé Bemard, Maurice Denis, Maximilien Luce, Jean Puys and Louis Valtat; the ex5