Markó, Munkácsy, Csontváry... 19th-century Hungarian Painting in the Gábor Kovács Art Collection

Like all important private collections, the Kovács Gábor Collection too owns a distinctive character. Collector and patron of the arts Gábor Kovács has been purchasing works of art for two decades now, with the intention of creating a collection that can appropriately represent the history of modern Hungarian painting. Including pieces from every period since the early 18th century, the collection now boasts almost four hundred artworks. Masterworks of vision-based landscape painting constitute the primary direction of the collecting effort, and works with other themes form harmonic complements. Exceptional gems include twenty pictures each by Markó Károly, Sr. and János Vaszary, as well as selected works by Béla Kádár and Menyhért Tóth.

The collection offers an almost complete account of the development that began with the Romantic and Realistic landscape representations of the 19th century, continued with the plein air painting of the Nagybánya school, and ended with the “isms” of the first decades of the 20 century. The smaller works beautifully complement the chefs-d’oeuvre, and there are real treasures like pictures by Ádám Mányoki, Mihály Munkácsy, Lajos Gulácsy or Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka.