SYMPHONY IN COLOUR: THE PÉCS SCHOOL 30 Years of the Faculty of Arts, University of Pécs

HAB presents Symphony in Colour: The Pécs School – 30 Years of the Faculty of Arts, a major group exhibition examining one of the most distinctive artistic constellations to have emerged in Hungary in the second half of the twentieth century and its continuing relevance today. About The exhibition places these formal investigations in dialogue with the conceptual legacy of the Pécs Workshop. Abstraction in Pécs is therefore presented not simply as a stylistic tendency but as a mode of thinking: one capable of accommodating perceptual research, systems and geometry, intuition, spirituality and the material experience of the artwork. Key historical reference points include Ilona Keserü and Ferenc Lantos in painting, and István Bencsik and Sándor Rétfalvi in sculpture. Their practices established questions that remain visible in the work of contemporary artists associated with the city. The specific character of Pécs itself — its landscape, Mediterranean atmosphere and strong tradition of material-based artistic thinking — forms another recurring source of inspiration. Colour occupies a particularly important position within this genealogy. The highly conscious approach to colour exemplified by Keserü, and subsequently explored through initiatives such as the Színerő / Colour Force symposia, has fostered an abstract language in which the chromatic spectrum becomes an active structural principle rather than an ornamental one. Alongside works derived from natural forms, the exhibition reveals an enduring interest in minimalism, non-objective abstraction, geometry, spirituality and the legacy of Op Art. The works reproduced in the catalogue make this historical dialogue particularly visible: Vasarely’s Bartók-Vasarely portfolio of 1981 appears alongside Keserü’s Condensing Sound Bodies from 2012, while Lantos’s monumental Spatial Elements of 1969 provides an earlier articulation of the rigorous dialogue between geometry, colour and spatial perception that continues throughout the exhibition. Opening reception: 10 September 2026 Exhibition dates: 11 September – 15 November 2026 HAB Curated by Délia Vékony and József Bullás HAB presents Symphony in Colour: The Pécs School – 30 Years of the Faculty of Arts , a major group exhibition examining one of the most distinctive artistic constellations to have emerged in Hungary in the second half of the twentieth century and its continuing relevance today. Bringing together 32 artists across several generations, the exhibition proposes the “Pécs School” not as a formally constituted movement or a stylistically homogeneous group, but as a complex network of affinities: a constellation of artists, teachers and students, parallel practices and intergenerational exchanges connected both to the city of Pécs and to the intellectual and institutional environment of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Pécs. Founded in 1996, the Faculty celebrates its thirtieth anniversary through an exhibition that places its history within the wider artistic genealogy of the city. The title Symphony in Colour encapsulates the central premise of the exhibition. Rather than describing a single visual language, it evokes a form of artistic polyphony: autonomous disciplines, practices and sensibilities developing alongside one another, influencing one another without losing their individual identities. Painting, sculpture, photography, conceptual art, installation and moving image coexist as separate voices within a broader cultural and intellectual composition. At stake is a deceptively simple question: can we speak of a “Pécs School” as an artistic movement? The exhibition deliberately resists the conventional idea of a school defined by a manifesto or common style. Instead, it understands the Pécs School retrospectively, as a continuously evolving system of relationships whose coherence lies in shared attitudes toward artistic freedom, experimentation, abstraction, materiality, perception and education. In this sense, the “school” is less a category than a framework through which to reconsider the persistence of a particular artistic mentality across generations. Pécs: a laboratory of post-war artistic modernity From the early 1960s onward, Pécs developed into a significant centre of Hungarian and Central European contemporary culture. Its particular importance arose from an unusually fertile interaction between visual art, music, dance, theatre and literature, creating an artistic ecology that was experimental in outlook while remaining deeply responsive to local cultural traditions. Among its emblematic manifestations was Ballet Pécs, whose radical and minimalist productions under Imre Eck brought contemporary choreography into dialogue with contemporary classical music. The city’s theatrical life, literary journals and cultural institutions likewise contributed to an environment in which new artistic practices could develop under the contradictory circumstances of state socialism. The journals Jelenkor and Öttorony , the legacy of the Zsolnay Factory, and the later development of the Zsolnay Quarter all formed part of this unusually dense cultural landscape. Within the visual arts, a crucial historical figure was Ferenc Martyn, whose experience of the French avant-garde and connection to the ideas of Abstraction-Création helped introduce a distinctly international vocabulary of modernism to Pécs. His legacy was carried forward and radically transformed by subsequent generations. Ferenc Lantos became a seminal figure in geometric abstraction and visual education, while Ilona Keserü played a defining role in the development of higher artistic education in the city. It was within this environment that the internationally recognised Pécs Workshop emerged, developing practices that moved between abstraction, photography, conceptual art, performance and land art. Its experimental ethos remains one of the central genealogies explored by the exhibition. Colour, form and abstraction One of the most persistent threads running through the Pécs School is a conviction in the autonomy of colour and form. From Martyn and Victor Vasarely to later generations, geometric abstraction, optical perception and the structural construction of the image repeatedly appear as sites of experimentation. Beyond abstraction: the figure, history and the political Yet Symphony in Colour deliberately complicates any attempt to identify Pécs exclusively with abstraction. Figurative practices become particularly visible among younger and ultra-contemporary artists, for whom the human body once again becomes a field through which fundamental questions of identity and existence can be addressed. At the same time, the conceptual and experimental legacy of the Pécs Workshop persists in practices engaging with historical memory, locality, political experience and the changing status of the artwork itself. Connections to Dada, the avant-garde rejection of convention and the migration of conceptual strategies into painting all contribute to a field in which local history can become the starting point for broader reflections on society, humanity and the conditions of art. Sculpture and the dignity of matter Sculpture constitutes another essential strand of the exhibition. The tradition represented by István Bencsik and Sándor Rétfalvi placed exceptional emphasis on material presence and on what the catalogue describes as the “dignity of matter”. Subsequent generations have retained a dialogue with figuration while introducing social sensitivity, historical references, assisted readymades and experimental combinations of materials. The result is a sculptural field in which meticulously constructed, meditative forms coexist with more intuitive and spontaneous approaches. Symbol, material and historical reference operate simultaneously, allowing highly specific cultural experiences to open onto more universal questions concerning human existence and the role of art. Contemporary works in the exhibition underscore the breadth of this vocabulary, from Csaba Árpád Horváth’s Preparation for Death (push-ups) and Ferenc Varga’s Stone Faces Carved by Man to Colin Foster’s Camels , Péter Lengyel’s WAR PIGS PANTHEON , Gergely Mészáros’s Directional Plant , and works by Tamás Gaál, József Palotás, Dóra Palatinus and Zsuzsa Tóth. Thirty years of the Faculty of Arts The exhibition also marks thirty years since the establishment of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Pécs in 1996. The Faculty occupies a crucial position within the network mapped by the exhibition, bringing together education in the visual arts, music, applied art and media arts and, more recently, expanding its teaching to include dance and theatre. Its interdisciplinary character, however, is presented as distinctly Central European. The ambition is not to dissolve individual media into a single artistic practice or to train artists as universal Gesamtkünstler . Instead, painters remain painters, sculptors remain sculptors and musicians remain musicians. The larger Gesamtkunstwerk emerges through proximity, exchange and reciprocal attention: autonomous artistic voices combining, metaphorically, like the individual parts of a symphony. It is precisely this coexistence of autonomy and exchange that gives the exhibition its title and conceptual structure. The main exhibition at HAB is further extended by satellite exhibitions in Budapest, conceived to broaden and complicate the central presentation. Rather than fixing the Pécs School as an already completed historical phenomenon, this multi-venue approach presents it as an open and continuously evolving discourse. Ultimately, Symphony in Colour argues that the significance of the Pécs School lies precisely in its resistance to definitive classification. Its history is one of transmission without simple repetition: successive generations inherit artistic problems, pedagogical structures and intellectual attitudes, but continually reformulate them in response to their own historical present. The Pécs School thus emerges neither as a retrospective label nor as a closed chapter of Hungarian modernism, but as a living interpretative framework — one that draws on tradition while remaining responsive to contemporary artistic and social questions. It is this simultaneous attachment to history and openness to the present that makes it, in the words of the exhibition catalogue, unmistakably contemporary. Exhibiting artists Zoltán Ádám, István Bencsik, Diána Bóbics, József Bullás, Colin Foster, Ágnes Előd, András Ernszt, Tamás Gaál, Tibor Gyenis, Csaba Hegyi, Csaba Árpád Horváth, Ilona Keserü, Károly Kismányoky, Ferenc Lantos, András Lengyel, Péter Lengyel, István Losonczy, Ferenc Martyn, Gergely Mészáros, Csaba Nemes, Márta Nyilas, Dóra Palatinus, József Palotás, Sándor Pinczehelyi, Sándor Rétfalvi, István Rigó, Péter Somody, Zsuzsa Tóth, Ernő Tolvaly, László Valkó, Ferenc Varga and Victor Vasarely. Exhibition details SYMPHONY IN COLOUR: THE PÉCS SCHOOL 30 Years of the Faculty of Arts Curators: Délia Vékony, József Bullás Assistant Curator: Júlia Kertész Project Leader: Tünde Sipos Design: Graphasel Design Studio Opening reception: 10 September 2026 Exhibition dates: 11 September – 15 November 2026 HAB – Hungarian Art & Business 1062 Budapest, Andrássy út 112, Hungary Read more Toggle Sculpture Multi-disciplinary Painting Drawing