National Gallery Brings Forgotten Women Artists into the Spotlight

The Hungarian National Gallery’s exhibition “Dedicated Ones” presents works by Hungarian women artists who were active during the first half of the 20th century. The exhibition opens to the public on Wednesday.

The curators, art historians Anna Kopócsy and Zsófia Drienyovszki, set out to showcase around 130 works by 60 female artists, highlighting “the arduous process through which Hungarian women artists, with perseverance and tremendous commitment, fought to earn recognition from a predominantly male art community and to establish that women could also be first-rate artists,” said Annamária Vígh, the museum’s deputy director-general, during a press preview on Monday.

She emphasized that

the exhibition spans more than half a century, tracing the evolution of women’s emancipation in the arts from the late 19th century, through the turn of the century, and into the 1950s.

Lead curator Anna Kopócsy explained that, rather than following a stylistic or art-historical chronology, the exhibition examines the works and their creators in close relation to one another, primarily within their historical context and through the lens of the social expectations associated with their gender. Alongside works by women artists held in the museum’s own collections, an extensive selection of loans helps present the full scope of the “arduous struggle to establish the artist as an autonomous subject,” while also opening up new avenues for research.

The deputy director-general also noted that the study of women’s art and female perspectives has become an increasingly important field not only in academic research but also in museum discourse. As part of this broader effort to uncover overlooked histories,

the Hungarian National Gallery has made a deliberate commitment to presenting the art of women creators from this half-century period in a more comprehensive and academically grounded way than ever before.

Annamária Vígh explained that, as visitors follow the exhibition’s timeline, new roles for women emerge while gender-based social conventions gradually loosen. Women artists increasingly enter fields previously dominated by men, addressing viewers through distinctive perspectives and particular sensitivities.

“This exhibition, the result of the outstanding and in-depth curatorial work of Anna Kopócsy and Zsófia Drienyovszki, is not the culmination of a process of reassessment, but rather a comprehensive starting point. We hope it will be followed by many more exhibitions exploring similar perspectives at our institution,” she said.

A catalogue accompanies the exhibition. In addition to exploring the exhibition’s thematic sections, its essays examine broader conceptual questions surrounding women’s art and provide a much-needed overview of exhibitions featuring women artists in Hungary between 1890 and 2025.

The deputy director-general also highlighted an accompanying educational publication developed by the gallery’s museum educators. Drawing on the exhibition’s particular sensitivity to its subject matter, the publication was designed with input from specialists to make the exhibition more accessible to people with reading and comprehension difficulties.

The exhibition’s central theme is the occupation of both symbolic and physical space: women’s emergence from the private sphere of the home into public life, their conquest of major artistic genres and techniques traditionally reserved for men, and their expression of artistic identity. In many works created between 1900 and 1950, the curators note, the distinctive perspectives of women artists—often markedly different from those of their male counterparts—are clearly evident.

The exhibition also seeks to do more than revisit the careers of established artists.

A key objective is to restore to the art-historical canon women whose names have been partly or entirely forgotten, despite having been recognized in their own time. These include Ilona Baranyai, Rózsi Bacher, Mária Barta, Alice Endresz, Lenke Földes, Margit Kampis, Kata Kalivoda, Vilma Kiss, Mária Kósa, Erzsébet Lóránt and Magda Zemplényi.

The exhibition is part of the Liszt Fest International Cultural Festival and will remain on view until February 14, 2027.

Via MTI, Featured image: MTI/Balogh Zoltán

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