Best of Budapest & Hungary

     The artist of the Ani Molnár Gallery, Tamás Konok (1930–2020), was included in the collection of the Pompidou Center in Paris. His paintings are thus placed alongside the works of artists such as Mondrian, Miró, Dubuffet, Duchamp and Brancusi, or indeed Hantai and Vasarely, in the institution that has played a leading cultural role since 1977. The Pompidou Center is home not only to Europe's largest but also to one of the most valuable contemporary art collections.

    Konok has already received numerous awards in his lifetime, having been awarded the Kossuth Prize, the Hazám Prize, the Prima Primissima, the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary, and the Knight of the National Order of Merit of the French Republic. However, this honour is particularly important in the afterlife of the artist's oeuvre, as Konok spent more than thirty years in Paris, where the artistic milieu largely influenced his career and style. Konok arrived to Paris on a scholarship in 1959 and lived there until the early 1990s, before moving back to Budapest - in a sense, the works in the collection are now returning home.

    The Pompidou Centre has selected three outstanding works from the 1970s: Graphidion vert (1976), Extension (1975), Espace descriptif (1975). A turning point in Konok's art occurred at the turn of the decade, when, following his travels in Zurich, he discovered the geometric abstract language that would influence his later works, including the ones in the Pompidou Collection. The monochrome surfaces, cut up by lines that are sometimes straight and sometimes curved, are unique and exciting because of their contrasting colors. It is a decent tribute to Tamás Konok's seven-decade career becoming part of the internationally outstanding Pompidou Collection.

    It is a decent tribute to Tamás Konok's seven-decade career becoming part of the internationally outstanding Pompidou Collection.