Gross Arnold — graphic artist and painter, recipient of the Artist of the Nation award and of the Kossuth and Munkácsy Prizes, and renewer of the etching genre — is one of Hungary’s best-known and most popular fine artists.

The exhibition, organized jointly by the Gross Arnold Gallery, the Jászi Gallery and the Miskolc Gallery, presents the imprint of the widely loved and well-known graphic artist’s half-century career. In his prints, worked with lace-like meticulousness, an enchanting fairy-tale world comes to life, full of smiling flowers with human faces, birds, angels and fairies. Gross was an eternal child who loved to play not only in his playful drawings but in real life as well. Alongside play, his other recurring theme is the garden and studio evoking his Transylvanian home. In his pictures the garden itself sometimes becomes a studio, and the studio a dreamlike wonder-world.

Besides the gardens embodying a longing for elsewhere, another recurring theme of his prints is the city — on one side the quiet idyll of the small town, on the other the fascinating, bustling crowds of the great cities. Gross traveled gladly and often; alongside Budapest, his pictures feature Rome, Florence, Amsterdam and Brussels — all of them, of course, populated by Gross’s peculiar fantasy creatures.

The special highlights of the exhibition are the color print variations and the dioramas. The latter are spatial extensions of the Gross fantasy world: paintings supplemented with tiny figures and objects, miniature box spaces reminiscent of dollhouses.

The recently published monograph The Garden of Art — The Art of Gross Arnold is available for purchase at the exhibition.

The exhibition will be opened by Révész Emese, art historian and curator
Venue: Rákóczi House (Rákóczi u. 2., entrance from Széchenyi utca)

The exhibition is on view until April 18, 2020.
Opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.
www.miskolcigaleria.eu

Partners: Gross Arnold Gallery, Jászi Gallery