Andreas Fogarasi. La ciudad de color/Vasarely Go Home: La ciudad de color/Vasarely Go Home

The exhibition’s starting point and centerpiece is Vasarely Go Home, a documentary film about a double event that took place in Budapest on Saturday, October 18th, 1969. Opening that day, Victor Vasarely, an internationally renowned artist of Hungarian origin, had a large retrospective exhibition at the Mücsarnok gallery in Budapest. This was his largest exhibition yet and the first exhibition of abstract art of its size in Hungary. It was a time of slow political “normalization”, and there was a cultural policy of actively re-establishing contacts with artists living abroad. While the show was an “import” of international art, it was at the same time a reclamation of Vasarely as a Hungarian, so that one can also speak of a cultural “export”. While Hungarian avant-garde art (comprising abstract art) of that time was at best tolerated, Vasarely’s exhibition was an immense public event attracting almost 90,000 visitors. The show was met with a good deal of expectation and criticism alike from the local artistic scene. The second event taking place that evening during the exhibition opening at Mücsarnok was a one-person protest by artist János Major, who had a small sign in his pocket reading “Vasarely Go Home”. This he showed only to friends and acquaintances when no one else was watching.