Imre Varga Collection

The sculptor and Kossuth Prize winner Imre Varga (1923–2019) was one of the most significant, internationally recognized representatives of public sculpture in Hungary. Varga was active in numerous genres of sculpture: political monuments, portraits, genre sculptures as well as medals. The backbone of his oeuvre consists of public political and decorative compositions.

He completed his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts between 1950 and 1956 under Pál Pátzay and Sándor Mikus. During the socialist era, he became one of the most often employed national artists. His style may be defined as decorative modern and postmodern. Varga’s characteristics are an ironic approach and a redefinition of the equipment forming classical monumentalist public sculpture. His figures often appear removed from the stiff pose, in an everyday posture. He often places stage elements and pieces of furniture around the main statue figures, he almost puts them on stage. About three hundred of his creations were placed on squares, in churches, museums and public buildings in Hungary and abroad. His statues can be seen in Belgium, France, Poland, Germany, Norway, Italy, Serbia and Israel.   

The present site of the Imre Varga Collection was opened in 1983 in a heritage building, a neoclassical peasant-bourgeois house from the 1st half of the 19th century. Prior to the fall of the communist regime, Imre Varga was a favourite artist of the party leadership and the cultural politics of the era. Between 1980 and 1990, he served as a member of parliament, he was vice president of the Patriotic People's Front and president of the Fészek Artist's Club. This explains the fact how a showroom with his works could be opened already during his lifetime, in the 1980s. The owner of the collection is the Hungarian state, its trustee is the BHM Budapest Gallery.