temporary exhibitions
“Neither Height nor Depth…” – In Memoriam William Blake
Selection from the works submitted to the call of the Contemporary Gallery of Tatabánya
On view: until February 28, 2026.
This year’s call, announced within the long-running In Memoriam series of the Contemporary Gallery of Tatabánya, invited artists to give visual form to the spirit of William Blake. From nearly two hundred and fifty submissions, the jury selected seventy works for exhibition, twenty-two of which are presented in this temporary chamber exhibition of the Bible Museum.
In the exhibited works, two creators meet: one from the 18th century and one contemporary. Accordingly, two artistic forms overlap, and the artists employ a variety of techniques as their means of expression.
Photos: Tamás Füle
Embrace of Annuli
The works of sculptor László Szabó
On view: until February 28, 2026.
László Szabó was born in Nagyváty (Baranya County) in 1948. He has been drawing since childhood. He learned several trades, which shaped his relationship with materials and tools. He began carving in 1983, first creating folk figures, then his characteristic world of form developed: sculptures with elongated, carefully finished surfaces. The material of his works is wood, which he loves because of its malleability. According to his own words, he wants to show what is beautiful and noble in human life, and what few people notice in his fine, harmonious works. He often creates mother figures, but he was also sensitively affected by the Russian-Ukrainian war that broke out in 2022, as an imprint of which, burnt, cracked and mutilated surfaces appeared in his work, to express pain and at the same time survival. László Szabó currently lives and works in Pécsvárád.
Photos: Tamás Füle
Previous exhibitions
The Touch of Humility – a Selection from Gyula Kemény’s Collection
From 18th September to 25th November 2025
If, in recent years, one has visited major collective exhibitions and paused in front of certain works admiring the beauty of the painting one would often have encountered the name of Gyula Kemény as the owner. It was this same experience that inspired the staff of the Bible Museum to present a subjective – and inevitably limited – selection from one of the country’s most significant private collections.
Gyula Kemény’s rich collection, the building of which has taken many decades of careful maturation, also reveals much about his personality and his activity as a collector. For when one becomes acquainted with a collection, he will soon realise that the works themselves tell stories about the collector. In this case, we can observe why Gyula Kemény considered certain paintings or certain important periods in art history to be of particular value with which he enriched his collection.
Kemény studied painting and restoration at the Academy of Fine Arts under Sándor Veres and later Jenő Barcsay, before beginning his career as a restorer. In this field, he is today one of Hungary’s most outstanding and highly regarded specialists. His career as collector began almost by accident, with a purchase made to help a friend. However, his direct professional engagement with paintings endowed his collecting with a distinctive vision, sensitivity, and sense of judgement, making the development of his collection both broader in scope and increasingly deliberate.
In interviews, he has frequently referred to the works of the artists of Nagybánya and the Nagybánya Moderns as the starting point of his collection. This took place at a time when Transylvanian Hungarian painting was still on the brink of discovery. From there, his collecting expanded towards those who, at the turn of the century – often having spent time in Paris – brought with them a breath of fresh air and a creative outlook that laid the foundations for modern Hungarian painting in those decades. A substantial part of the collection comes from members of the Nyolcak (“The Eight”) group of painters, while the distinguished representatives of the Alföld school, key figures in the vigorous artistic movements of the early decades of the twentieth century, are also strongly represented.
The exhibition offers visitors the gift of this world, shaped with extraordinary sensitivity. It allows them to immerse themselves in the mystery that has so captivated the collector himself.
Béla Iványi Grünwald: Girl Holding a Fruit Basket
Photos: Tamás Füle
Sonatas of Colours
From 20th March to 12th July 2025
László Kontraszty (1906–1994) was among the 20th-century painters who, by following a consistent path, created a distinctive body of work. With Italian ancestry and a middle-class family background from Szeged, he set out on his journey into the fine arts.
His artistic career, which spanned nearly a century, was greatly influenced by the ideas of Ernő Kállai and Gyula Papp, who aimed to pass on the guiding principles and vision of the Bauhaus Movement that they had brought with them from Weimar.
Through them and like-minded contemporaries, Kontraszty became acquainted with non-figurative representation. His love for classical music and its inspiration are powerfully evident in his paintings. The forms, colours, tones, and motifs in his works create rhythm and dynamism akin to a musical composition, forming flowing, winding harmonies. He himself referred to his creations as “optical music.”
His drawings were first exhibited in 1935, and later, Kállai invited him to participate in an exhibition he organised — the 1947 Exhibition of the Second Hungarian Group of Abstract Artists.
A significant period in his life was his involvement with the artistic community in Ófalu, Békásmegyer, alongside fellow artists such as Márk Vedres, Menyhért Tóth, and Tihamér Gyarmathy. He also maintained good relations with Béla Czóbel and Jenő Barcsay, frequently visiting them in Szentendre. At István Szőnyi’s studio in Zebegény, he conducted colour studies.
In 1945, he became affiliated with the European School. Among his contemporaries, he felt the closest artistic connection with Ferenc Martyn, Tamás Lossonczy, Tihamér Gyarmathy, and Oszkár Papp. His first solo exhibition was held in 1959 at the Fényes Adolf Hall, followed by one at the Kunsthalle in 1975, and later at the Ernst Museum in 1987, opened by art historian Ottó Mezei.
A fundamental characteristic of his works is the creation of contrasts, the visual representation of the tension arising from them, and ultimately their resolution. From the late 1970s, floating organic forms and later calligraphic shapes set against contrasting backgrounds became dominant in his paintings. Built upon the colours of nature, his compositions were finely tuned with subtle tonal variations and enveloped in a distinctive pearlescent glow that softened the sharpness of their contours.
This final major phase of his creative journey marked the culmination of his artistic expression in its most refined form. As reflected in the title of the 2024 monograph, his work was fulfilled in „found freedoom” (Anna Váraljai – Gábor Andrási: Kontraszty. Found Freedom, Gondolat Kiadó)
His works can be found in major domestic collections as well as internationally.
The staff of the Bible Museum felt that the moment was ripe to introduce to the public the artistic career of László Kontraszty, a previously hidden treasure of the 20th century.
The exhibition features more than 100 works from the painter’s last period on two levels.
Heavens of Heavens – The Painted Spaces of the Thought
From 20th September 2024 to 22nd February 2025
A selection of the work of painter Tihamér Gyarmathy is on display at the new temporary exhibition of the Bible Museum.
Gyarmathy started as a pupil of János Vaszary. He was influenced by the works of the Bauhaus masters and the classical avant-garde generation. His intellectual master was Ernő Kállai, whose 1947 book The Hidden Face of Nature and the theory of bioromanticism it expounded became a defining influence on his entire career.
After the war, he became a member of the European School, founded in 1945, and later of the Group of Abstract Artists.
Towards the end of the 1940s, when all abstract and abstract art from the depths was considered meaningless, Tihamér Gyarmathy preferred to retreat into the background to create according to his inner needs. He worked in a state job and became an outcast.
Tihamér Gyarmathy: Thought in Space
Photo: Tamás Füle
He moved from the figurative depictions typical of his early period to the intellectual and conceptual motivations that have left posterity images that are peculiarly Gyarmathy. The colours and lights, the vertical and horizontal, the often seemingly structural expressions, in which there is a universe to be explored, the microcosm and the macrocosm together. A flowing, moving world of rhythmic shapes and warm colours that evokes thoughts and shows direction.
Heavens of Heavens – Tihamér Gyarmathy’s paintings in the exhibition at the Bible Museum illuminate something of a world whose many mysteries we already know well through natural science, yet it is faith that sees and understands in all this the Creator, the great Creator of the universe.
In addition to a few early figurative works, the exhibition presents more than half a hundred of the artist’s post-war paintings, as well as some of his contemporaries.
From Generation to Generation – Böhm-Collection
From 24th March to 27th July 2024
From generation to generation – preceding and proceeding in our footsteps…
It is always a challenge to convey the intellectual, spiritual and material legacy of successive generations to the general public in the closed world of an exhibition space.
The encounter with art forms shapes us and encourages us to move forwards.
This mission began with the foundation of József Böhm the Elder’s collection, mainly selected from the works of the Nagybánya masters.
József Böhm Jr.’s collection was greatly influenced by the works of
Transylvanian artists, including Saxon artists, and then, along with the lovingly preserved material from Nagybánya, he further enriched his collection with works from the Central European avant-garde and constructive art movement.
The exhibition honours the heritage that has guided us through the past and continues to guide us through the present and into the future.
Fritz Kimm: Maja Philippi (Daughter of the Sculptor Margarete Depner)