This year, too, we are presenting the minerals and nature-inspired pictures of painter and graphic artist Gross Arnold.
Exhibitors from 17 countries are bringing special minerals to Hungary’s largest mineral fair, and we can also admire the new acquisitions of Hungarian museums.
Gross Arnold was drawn to the beauties of nature from childhood. With his father and his elder brother he frequently made shorter and longer sketching trips to the Turda Gorge (Tordai-hasadék) and all along the Arieș (Aranyos) valley to spy out nature’s secrets. While their father painted in oils, he sat in the grass trying to capture the details of the landscape in pencil and watercolor. The forest, the stream bank and the meadow became his familiar, accustomed element, and this closeness to nature fundamentally shaped his entire later oeuvre.
He was mad about beautiful minerals; agates with delicate patterns and lacy crystals fascinated him. From the 1980s onwards he was a regular at Hungarian mineral fairs. He was bound to Pálinkás László by an acquaintance of more than a quarter of a century; together they ventured — now by plane, now by Trabant — to various mineral exhibitions and collecting sites across Europe. They drove a Trabant to Idar-Oberstein, Europe’s gemstone capital, in what was then still West Germany, where, in the football-field-sized warehouse of one of the largest dealers in raw gemstones, Arnold disappeared into one of the barrels — his legs pointing at the sky! After a quarter of an hour of “digging” he popped out of the barrel, held up a Brazilian agate with a wondrous pattern, and, raising a finger to his bristly hair, declared in a tone that brooked no contradiction: “Here is the miracle — the true artist is nature; no painter could ever invent anything like this.” — recalls Pálinkás László, mineral expert and organizer of the fair.
The Budapest Show, one of Hungary’s largest mineral fairs, moved 11 years ago to the Railway History Park, among Arnold’s other great loves: the trains. He had a solo exhibition at the 2007 show, and it was on this anniversary that we organized the memorial exhibition in 2017.
Everyone is warmly welcome! Friday–Saturday–Sunday, 9 a.m. – 6 p.m.!
