Hungarian Conservative

The display of Csontváry’s Sicilian landscape Full Moon over Taormina, painted in 1901, is considered an art sensation, as the privately-owned painting has not been seen by the wider audience for a long time. Now, it is featured in the exhibition titled Rome–Budapest, which opened on Thursday in the Virág Judit Gallery.

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 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.