Painters Paint Themselves 2026 FRESH EXHIBITION

‘Every portrait that is painted with feeling 
is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.’
(from Oscar Wilde:  The Picture of Dorian Gray)

‘Ogni dipintore dipinge se’ – ‘Every painter paints himself’ – is the sentence quoted by Daniel Arasse in the afterword to his celebrated book The Artist in the Work. Beyond the fact that this phrase was attributed to a number of highly influential figures (including Bru nelleschi, Savonarola and Leonardo da Vinci) in the fifteenth cen tury, it captures something essential: ‘there was a sense in the air at the time that a work of art inevitably resembles its maker, whom we “recognise” in it’1. Interestingly, unlike writers, the fine artists of the period were not enthusiastic about this proposition. Arasse explains this as follows: ‘If painters accepted that “every painter paints him self”, they would also have to acknowledge that something artisanal enters into their art, and that they are incapable of giving evidence of sprezzatura, that elegant nonchalance thanks to which “art conceals art” and which was starting to become a socially established model of artistic conduct at that time. Furthermore: ‘[…] manifest in this formulation is one of the fundamental stakes of the Renaissance into focus, namely whether it could be made generally accepted that the “personnalité artistique” plays a crucial role in creating and repre senting forms, and in their history.’ Arasse’s argument will not be discussed in detail here, but a particular line of interpretation will be followed as a conceptual point of departure for the present exhibi tion. In his collection of essays, Arasse was interested in ‘how the artist, the person who painted the work, emerges in the subject of that work’. 

Painting centred on the ‘artistic personality’ reached its culmi nation with Kant’s aesthetics of genius and the Romantic period. It was precisely then, almost two hundred years ago, that this concep tion of artistic authorship entered a crisis, apparently as a result of a technological discovery – the invention of photography – and since then the question of whether painting remains a legitimate artistic practice has emerged again and again. From the perspective of the present, it is clear that such debates have invariably flared up as part of larger paradigm shifts and crises affecting society as a whole. It is also clear that Rodchenko’s radical reductionism in his 1921 triptych The Death of Painting, which ‘depicted’ the three primary colours, did not bring painting to an end but, together with the work of other avant-garde artists, gave new impulses to it. Nor do we read the critic Douglas Crimp’s paradigmatic 1981 essay The End of Painting as a prophecy announcing the end of painting, but rather as a critique of society and capitalism that approached the question of painting in terms of it becoming a form of luxury commodity.

Aesthetic and philosophical self-reflection has always been an integral part of painting, as has its engagement with society; thus, paradoxically, painting has emerged from debates of this kind strengthened rather than weakened. On this basis, we may be justi fied in asking: why do painters paint today? This question, among others, is also explored by this year’s Fresh exhibition, now being held for the seventh time.

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the parallel solo exhibitions is that they enable visitors, as they move from room to room, to en counter an ever-changing range of painterly forms, methods and sys tems of thought. The artists featured in previous exhibitions were active in different genres: besides painting, graphic art, sculpture and installation art, we were able to present works belonging to numer ous other genres in the rooms dedicated to individual artists. Then, in 2023, we presented a selection devoted specifically to sculpture, which provided new insights into the interaction between works be longing to a single artistic genre.

Following this concept, this year’s selection is devoted to paint ing. As in 2023, the Kunsthalle Budapest’s curators have selected six painters, so that visitors can gain a more in-depth understanding of this particular field of artistic practice. While these exhibitions are not retrospectives, the selected works offer an insight into the art ists’ mature oeuvres. According to their modes of representation, the displayed works include figurative and abstract paintings; sty listically, they may be painterly or drawing-like, while their subjects may equally be mythological or drawn from everyday life. In other words, regardless of the genre, the artistic personalities are part of the works through their styles, concepts, ways of thinking and work ing methods.

The artists featured in this year’s exhibition, to whom we would hereby like to express our thanks, are: Ákos Bánki, Réka Kaszás, Gábor Király, Kata Könyv, Tamás Menyhárt Menyus and Kati Verebics.   

Mária Kondor-Szilágyi, chief curator, Kunsthalle Budapest 

Kaszás Réka | A hiány formái

Király Gábor | A kék horizontján

Könyv Kata | Kép-Testek

Menyhárt Tamás | Élő és halott angyalok

Bánki Ákos | Szekvenciák

Verebics Kati | Nautilus-álom (Rétegek között)

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