Within Frames is the first exhibition staged by the Hungarian National Gallery that presents a comprehensive picture of Hungarian art between 1958 and 1968. A significant part of the 350 or so exhibits – paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings, books, posters and works of applied art – are not included in permanent exhibitions and many of them had been concealed from the public for the five or six decades since they entered public collections.
The show encompasses a period bracketed by two major historic events: the defeat of the 1956 Revolution in Hungary and the Prague Spring of 1968. Underlying this period was the notorious system of classifying cultural works (books, films, etc.), known as the ‘Three Ts’, standing for the Hungarian words (Tiltott, Tűrt, Támogatott) for “Forbidden”, “Tolerated” and “Supported”. This system, imposed on art and artists by the cultural policy of the time, permeated every aspect of cultural life, including arts events, exhibitions and the publication of books alike. Our exhibition reveals how, despite the frames defined by banned themes (the Revolution of 1956, the Soviet occupation, the dictatorial nature of the political regime) and suffering from the lost illusions of 1956, artists continued to experiment in many ways to find forms of contemporary artistic expression.
The exhibition is accompanied by a Hungarian and an English catalogue and is open until February 18, 2018.
