Károly Ferenczy : modernité hongroise
Auteur(s) : Collectif
Exhibition at the Petit Palais, Paris, 14 April – 6 September 2026
As famous in Hungary as he is little known in France, Károly Ferenczy (1862–1917) is a major figure of modernity in Central Europe. His profoundly unique body of work establishes him as one of the great painters of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. A founding member of an artists’ colony nestled in the heart of the Hungarian countryside, the artist made plein air painting one of his most emblematic practices.
The catalogue of the first French retrospective dedicated to Ferenczy seeks to highlight his fundamental originality. Neither naturalist, nor symbolist, nor impressionist, nor Nabi, but a little of all these at once, he embodies the cosmopolitanism of the fin-de-siècle across the full breadth of his culture. Nearly 140 works—landscapes, portraits, family scenes, biblical subjects, nudes and caricatures—highlight the many facets of the artist’s approach and reveal his fundamental role in the emergence of a truly modern artistic school in Hungary.
