Shadowless. Retrospective Exhibition of Gyula Czimra (1901–1966)

"According to his contemporaries, Gyula Czimra, who in the twilight of his life created pictures with a special painterly quality inspired in part by metaphysical art, withdrew almost completely from public art life in the mid-1930s. From the very outset of his career, however, the life course of this introspective artist, who made his art amid the tranquillity of his custom-made home and self-cultivated garden, had raised multiple questions. Even today, a series of issues remain unclarified, and researchers often find themselves perplexed. In the wake of the exhibitions in the 1960s, Czimra’s oeuvre emerged from obscurity to become, for a younger generation of artists, the very embodiment of an authentic and modern artistic vocabulary and attitude. Indeed, for practitioners of modern Hungarian painting, Czimra’s chosen path, unapologetically divergent from the mainstream, manifested the possibility of renewing art while preserving traditions. In view of the myths surrounding the painter’s creative habits, there is clearly a need in art historiography to address the unresolved issues and rediscover the artist in all his complexity. " An excerpt from the essay by Andrea Verba

Shadowless. Retrospective Exhibition of Gyula Czimra (1901–1966), Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest, 23 May – 24 September 2025