On 18 October, on the occasion of the Hungarian Painting Day, the Kunffy Lajos Memorial Museum is open to the public free of charge, and we are waiting for you from 10 am to 4 pm!
Hungarian Painting Day is an initiative that has been celebrated every year on 18 October since 2002. The reason behind the choice of the date is that traditionally, in October we commemorate St Luke, who is not only the patron saint of doctors, but also the patron saint of painters and painting. This is why 18 October, St Luke's Day, has become Hungarian Painting Day.
"What does the painter do? He mixes colours, dissolves pigments, shapes surfaces, forms space into planes, kneads material into a vision, and forms a message from the spectacle. He gives beauty, harmony, question marks and exclamation marks to an environment, to a living space. It upsets and flattens, it brings tears to your eyes, it makes you howl and calms you down. The painter kneads the essence of the visible world into pictorial material. But the painter does much more than that: he shapes attitudes, perceptions and perspectives. In today's terms, it thematizes, because the painter is hungry not only for the spectacle, but for the motives, the stories, the feelings and experiences, the calculations and thoughts behind the spectacle, just as the viewer is hungry for the painting. This is why painting, though a language independent of time and place, is only complete if it carries the characteristics of the time and space in which it was born. If there is a Hungarian culture, if there is a contemporary sensibility and if there is a communal space that defines our spiritual existence, then there must be an occasion to celebrate the authenticity of thought, of experience, of professionalism. Painting is among man's most ancient heritages, as relevant today as it was thousands of years ago. The Day of Hungarian Painting upholds this spiritual foundation and aims to continue to uphold it in the future," writes Munkácsy Prize-winning graphic artist and painter György Verebes.
