The rearranged collection offers a language for understanding modern art that we already possess: the vision of colour and form. The practical organizing power of the exhibition is given by the dominance of certain colours, materials or shapes perceived in the spaces.
Laying out the map of the exhibition in front of you, you could highlight optimistic reds, stark silver-blacks, popular neon pastels geometric rooms.
In the summer of 2015 the House of Arts hosted sculptures and prints by French artist Bernard Venet in the Modern Art Gallery - László Vass Collection. This involved the removal of some of the pieces from the Vass collection from their previous location to await their fate in storage.
The cyclically changing arrangement (as the collection exceeds the amount that can be exhibited at one time) also offers us new opportunities to see other, previously unseen pieces from the collection. The result of a recent selection at the end of the year is an exhibition that makes us feel like participants in an experiment in colour dynamics, with the artists themselves as laboratory technicians.
The organizing principle, as well as the concept of collecting itself, works according to a system of its own, but there is also a coherent force that makes the whole of the images into an exhibition. Walking through the many small spaces of the building, even without any training in art theory we can become active recipients of what we see, relying on nothing more than our eyes and our senses. Each of these spaces tells a separate story, they were placed in an exhibition space on the basis of a subjective (but non-figurative, geometric commitment) system of the highest quality, set up by László Vass.
In the present exhibition the presence of a majority of Hungarian artists is noticeable. At the same time the Hungarian figures also indicate that the Vass collection once started with studio visits and Hungarian figures in Hungary, and that Hungarian material dominated it until the mid-1990s. This impetus was the result of László Vass's meeting with Jenő Barcsay, who influenced him to embark on a conceptual collecting activity.
The aim of the later international direction was to present Hungarian art in a universal context and to enable the Hungarian public to become acquainted with the works of the most important masters of international geometric art.
The nearly ninety works on display show a new, lighter face of the Vass collection. The geometric playfulness, the variety of the works, the polychrome harmonies offer the public a new experience.
Exhibiting artists:
Getulio Alviani, Imre Bak, Jenő Barcsay, Charles Bézie, Helmut Bruch, John Carter, Alan Charlton, Christo, Tibor Csiky, Daniel de Spirt, Pál Deim, Jean-François Dubreuil, János Fajó, Jakob Gasteiger, Andrzej Gieraga, Ingo Glass, István Haász, Károly Halász, István Haraszty, Tamás Hencze, Gábor Heritész, Katalin Hetey, Gottfried Honegger, Jerzy Kałucki, Ditty Ketting, Tamás Konok, László Lakner, Adolf Luther, Attila Mata, János Megyik, Manfred Mohr, Vera Molnár, François Morellet, István Nádler, Marta Pan, Thomas Pihl, Yves Popet, Henri Prosi, Dirk Rathke, Torsten Ridell, Reinhard Roy, Nelly Rudin, Klaus J. Schoen, Frank Stella, Tamás Szikora, Luis Tomasello, Bernar Venet, Kati Vilim, Ludwig Wilding, András Wolsky, Shizuko Yoshikawa
