As we enter 2024, the question rightly arises: what does the future hold for us? Will this new year really be new, and if so, in what ways? How can we move in new directions, can we change the things we no longer need?

HAB’s New Start exhibition seeks answers to these socially pressing questions through modern and contemporary art. Curator Gábor Gulyás selects Hungarian and international stars from one of Hungary’s most prestigious private collection.

Highly talented artists create something new, show new solutions, while creating an aesthetic experience with a cathartic effect on the recipient. The greatest artists are able to create an aesthetic value that is at once objective (the experience of freedom), subjective (the experience of depth) and cosmic (the experience of height). In this way, it comes into contact with a kind of Absolute.

Only few people can do this. In the Antal-Lusztig collection there are works by artists who have reached this level. Among them, the Budapest exhibition features works by such important artists who did not succeed within a group of a particular trend, but who were all able to make a new start in the world of fine art. No one had previously worked with the accentuated motifs that have become a stylistic icon, no one had gone before them on the artistic paths that they had. Some of them have thus become highly impact icons in Hungarian art (Csontváry, Gulácsy, Kondor, Schaár, Vajda) and others are now rightly regarded as international stars (Hantaï, Hirst, Moholy-Nagy, Nitsch, Beuys). In addition to the classics, unique works by contemporary Hungarian artists such as Bukta, Keserü, Kicsiny, Lakner and Maurer will be on display from 23 January 2024 in the exhibition spaces of HAB at Andrássy út 112.

Exceptionally significant works from the largest private collection of fine art in Hungary are now on display in Budapest, through which we can experience the gift of invention.