The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) presents the exhibition, American, born Hungary: Kertész, Capa, and the Hungarian American Photographic Legacy, on view at the museum from October 5, 2024, to January 26, 2025. The exhibition will fill a missing chapter in art history and is slated to be the most comprehensive exhibition to examine the geographical reach and extensive influence that Hungarian American photographers have had on 20th-century photography.
American, born Hungary features more than 170 works and related ephemera from 33 photographers. “The photography of Americans born in Hungary is an important, but very under-told, story,” Nyerges said. “As one of the country’s top 10 comprehensive art museums, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is positioned, and even called upon, to help lead the way in telling it.”
Hungarian American artists transformed modern photography in the U.S. Some introduced radical, experimental photographic techniques while others brought with them innovative approaches to photojournalism, advertising and fashion photography. Their encounters with different facets of American life further shaped their approaches to the medium, ultimately leading them to contribute in robust ways to modern photography.
The wealth of intellectual and artistic talent that departed Hungary between the end of World War I and the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 is almost unprecedented in size and effect. This historic emigration included legendary symphony conductors George Szell and Eugene Ormandy, composer Béla Bartók, award-winning film directors Michael Curtiz and Alexander Korda and world-renowned architects and designers Marcel Breuer and László Moholy-Nagy, who is also a featured photographer in the exhibition.
Included in American, born Hungary are works by notable photographers such as André Kertész (Kertész Andor), Martin Munkácsi (Mermelstein Márton), Nickolas Muray (Mandl Miklós) and György Kepes, along with less familiar names whose photos are instantly recognizable. Robert Capa (Freidmann Endre Ernö), for example, was a pioneer of modern photojournalism whose photos of Omaha Beach on D-Day are among the most renowned images of World War II.
The exhibition examines Hungarian photographers working during the period of political turmoil in their home country during the early 20th century, before the photographers began their emigration to European capitals such as Paris, where surrealism evolved in the 1930s; Berlin, where modernism flourished; and in Dessau, Germany, where the utopian Bauhaus art school was a haven for the post-World War I avant-garde.
The focus of American, born Hungary, however, is the impact of Hungarian- born artists on photography in the United States, especially in urban centers such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Through stunning images, the exhibition shows the profound impact of this group of photographers who explored their new country with sensitivity, rigor and insight.
American, born Hungary: Kertész, Capa, and the Hungarian American Photographic Legacy is organized for VMFA and curated by the museum’s Director and CEO Alex Nyerges. The exhibition, which is co-curated by Károly Kincses, the first director of the Hungarian Museum of Photography, debuted at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary.
American, born Hungary: Kertész, Capa, and the Hungarian American Photographic Legacy
from October 5, 2024, to January 26, 2025
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
200 N Arthur Ashe Blvd,
Richmond, VA 23220
www.VMFA.museum
