“The Golden Age of Hungarian Graphic Art – Gross Arnold’s Collection” was the title of the exhibition held in June 2003 at the Vízivárosi Gallery, showing the sheets of the wonderful graphic collection that the master assembled with great care over decades from the works of his contemporaries, the great Hungarian graphic artists of the second half of the 20th century. In 2015–16 the Gross Arnold Gallery presented the outstanding sheets of this collection in a series of thematic chamber exhibitions.
Selected sheets from this material have been consigned to the Jászi Gallery’s online auction.
On May 11, the exciting material of the Jászi Gallery’s online auction includes outstanding graphic works of post-war Hungarian art, among them the Gross collection. Within Gross Arnold’s wide-ranging collection, outstanding graphic works by his contemporaries occupied a place of honor. Nearly every major graphic artist of the generation that emerged in the 1960s was represented in his collection by prints of significant value: works by Béla Kondor, János Kass, Ádám Würtz, Gyula Hincz, Viola Berki, Mihály Gácsi, Csaba Rékassy and Líviusz Gyulai all enriched the collection. Among the 56 works from the artist’s collection featured in the auction are several pieces by Vladimir Szabó (1905–1991), a role model for the artist, as well as by the painter Sándor Gajzágó (b. 1942), Gross Arnold’s friend, with whom he took part in dozens of exhibitions together.
From the collection, among the significant graphic works of Béla Kondor (1931–1972), the auction features four works from his legendary diploma project of 1955–56, the etching series Scenes from the Time of György Dózsa (Jelenetek Dózsa György idejéből), as well as a woodcut from his series of illustrations for Shakespeare’s Hamlet, also made in 1956.
