Hungarian Conservative

For over 20 years, collectors have awaited the opportunity to once again acquire Gulácsy’s iconic masterpiece. In 2002, the painting’s emergence caused a sensation, disproving the assumption among art historians that the masterpiece had perished during the Second World War.

The artwork, also known as the Hungarian Mona Lisa, surfaced in 2005 after a century of obscurity but it did not stay in Hungary at that time.

According to the Kieselbach Gallery’s statement, this artwork, which evokes the spirit of the Paris School, Cézanne’s blues, the antique sculptures of the Louvre, and Henri Matisse’s nude painting, is one of the most beautiful still lives in modern Hungarian painting.

The pièce de résistance of this year’s Virág Judit Gallery auction will be a large oil canvas by Hungarian French abstract painter Simon Hantaï, with a starting price of 32 million forints.