Nude Sculptures from the Turn of the Century

As a new thematic unit at our permanent exhibition, we present white marble statues that exemplify types of nude representation, made during the period from the turn of the last century to the 1920s.

At around 1890, monument sculpture was still marked by a historicizing eclecticism, while portraiture, genre compositions and medal art already embraced naturalism and art nouveau.

The organic execution of the respective works of Miklós Ligeti and Szilárd Sződy at our exhibit bears testimony to the influence of Rodin, from whom the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest already purchased works at around 1900. By contrast, József Róna, a sculptor of Historicism, following his antiquating nudes (Female Nude with Palm), created realistic figures with classical subjects in the new baroque vein (Adam and Eve).

Ödön Moiret’s statue from the 1910s reinterprets the figure of Venus, the birth of the goddess of love. Zsigmond Kisfaludi Strobl modelled a symbolic representation of Morning in the early 1920s. It was at that time that Fülöp Beck Ö. depicted a key scene from the origin myth of the Magyars in his work, Emese’s Dream.