Introducing our five youngest artists
The generation of artists born in the nineties and now being in their twenties and thirties is the youngest age group of creators in the MNB Collection. They are members of Generation Y, who are seen as distinctly different from all previous generations in their attitudes, values, and in their views of themselves and the world. Let us introduce our five youngest artists.
The formation of MNB’s collection began with a generation of artists of great repute who have created an oeuvre of major stature, who reached the level of contemporary art commerce they deserved in the latter stages of their careers.
In the post-Covid era, MNB Arts and Culture have turned their attention to young artists, „because they are fresh, contemporary and have already proven themselves despite their young age”, says Kinga Hamvai, head of the division responsible for the collection. Among the many reasons, philanthropy played a major role, simply put, young people need support more than accomplished artists. The fact that the works of emerging artists are available at even lower prices and that the curators of the collection see a great future for the artists included in the collection should not be dismissed either.
Introducing the youngest of the collection, the MNB’s millennial artists. They are the ones who grew up playing video games, the children of the digital revolution, since technological development has ensnared every aspect of their lives when they were growing up. The first generation, often questioning the values and lifestyles of those who came before them, place great emphasis on work-life balance. They are creative and innovative; they adapt easily to the fast-changing world.
Some of the works by Martin Góth in the collection managed by the MNB
Amoeba in the Squared Exercise Book (2021), Space Drive (2022), Smile, Fire, Vasarely (2021)
Martin Góth (1995)
Martin Góth is the youngest of the team, a notable representative of the young generation of Hungarian artists entering the scene around 2020. He was born in Kaposvár in 1995 and started his studies at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2015, where he graduated in 2021 majoring in painting.
During university, he was engaged in conceptual art that criticizes the institutional system, both in an attempt to conform to the expectations of university education and to rebel against it at the same time. In 2019, he spent a month in Berlin with the Peter and Irene Ludwig Foundation of Aachen, exploring the art institutional system there. He then spent a semester on an Erasmus scholarship at the Department of Painting & Printmaking of the Glasgow School of Art, where he rediscovered painting.
His language of painting is built on symbols and pop cultural motifs. His images have the visual elements of the first computer games and personal experiences of his own childhood. His canvases are based on surfaces resembling the boards of board games, and his paintings evoke graffiti in a digital retro style. He has participated in several solo and group exhibitions in Budapest.
Some of the works by Ádám Dóra in the collection managed by the MNB
Natura Architektura Alizarin concrete blocks (2019), Experimental Details (2021), Villa Arson II. (2020)
Ádám Dóra (1993)
Ádám Dóra, born in Vác, graduated from the University of Fine Arts in 2017, majoring in painting in the class of Zsigmond Károlyi and Zoltán Ötvös. His paintings border on abstraction and figurative art. His tableau paintings are characterised by richly coloured stain painting, lightness and influences from fashion and pop culture. Ádám Dóra is a conscious artist, he is up to date with what his peers are doing and constantly studies the art of those before him. He creates in series that build on each other, that show connections and have recurring elements. He figures that a painter’s practice has something very personal as a central point, something deeply experiential, rooted in childhood, and the motifs are built around that, but somehow everything feeds from this central point.
Initially, he explored the intersections of the built environment and reductive abstraction, geometry and organic expression; the recurring motifs in these pictures were the cliffs of the coast of southern France. In his work the technocratic world of our present confronts the human desire for nature. During the pandemic, he started painting giant sneakers with UV colours of the eighties that came to life on their own, which he now combines with „easy pop” clouds. He already participated in several solo and group exhibitions and he was the youngest nominee to participate in the 2021 Esterházy Art Awards exhibition at the Ludwig Museum.
Some of the works by Menyhért Szabó in the collection managed by the MNB
Filter I. (2022), Glossy VIII. (2022), Glossy IX. (2018-2021)
Menyhért Szabó (1992)
Menyhért Szabó is a descendant of an artist family, who works in the same studio on Százados Street, where he was born and raised. He graduated from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2018 as a sculptor, his professors were: Pál Kő, Géza Sallai and Péter Gálhidy. His sculptural approach is rooted in the classical tradition, but his way of expression is posing contemporary questions: how can sculpture describe the contradictions of contemporary existence and self-definition?
The focus of his work is mainly the human face. His rubber stamp sculptures deal with the questions of perfection and the distortion of the ideal. In a modern spirit, he recreates figures from ancient mythology, but contrasts the characters with colours: he uses neon colours and industrial metallic paints for his rubber or metal sculptures. His characteristic sculptures are regularly included in group or solo exhibitions in Hungary.
Some of the works by Orsolya Lia Vető in the collection managed by the MNB
Liquid Slices of Time (13PDL) (2021), Liquid Slices of Time (21PDL) (2021)
Orsolya Lia Vető (1991)
Orsolya Lia Vető, painter, graduated from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2014, where her teachers were János Kósa and Réka Nemere. She trained for a summer semester at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Nuremberg, Germany, and after graduating as a painter, she carried on studying, she applied to the Doctoral School of the Art Faculty of the University of Pécs. She made no secret of her reasons, it was because she was allured by the abstract direction and colour orientation of the professors there.
Her lush, abstract canvases, inspired by motifs from nature, are close to gestural painting, while she continues to consciously build them up, layer by layer. The works pulsate with the energy of life, nature and flora thrive on her images. In addition to her painting degree, she also has a masters degree in art history and considers it important to consider theoretical issues as well.
Some of the works by Dániel Bernáth in the collection managed by the MNB
Songbirdsong (2021), Mountain Mama no60 (2021), Mirror Lake Swan (2021)
Dániel Bernáth (1990)
In his work, the 33-year-old artist, born in Debrecen, explores the systems of image-making and the identity of the pictorial object. With a reduced visual language, he works with the tools of minimalism and abstraction, striving for the greatest possible simplicity. The form of his images is unconventional, in his earlier Organimetry series the outer silhouette of his images took on an organic form, and the later Mountain Mama series focused on fragmented inner structures, but still evoking the closeness of nature to create a structure of vivid compositions. In other cases, the tableau painting is based on natural wood made visible. He works in his studio in Mátra, his main source of inspiration is nature and wildlife.
In 2022, he won the Strabag Artaward, which gave him the opportunity of a solo exhibition at the Strabag Kunstforum in Austria. He has participated in several international residencies in Spain, Germany and in Krems, Austria.