Between October 3–6, 2019, the ninth iteration of Art Market Budapest will welcome visitors to the exhibition halls and the outdoor park of Millenáris Park, with a special selection of art. As a measure of the extraordinary interest surrounding the event, Hungary’s largest annual exhibit of contemporary fine art and photography will feature over a thousand works by more than 500 artists, brought together by over 100 exhibitors from 25 countries over five continents.
This year Art Market Budapest has attracted an unprecedented number of applications by international exhibitors. The organizers expect this event to offer the general public an international art experience of exceptional quality on the one hand, and to establish Budapest as one of the foremost cultural hubs in Europe and the art capital of the region on the other. Exhibitors at Art Market Budapest 2019 hail from the US, Australia, Austria, the Czech Republic, the Republic of South Africa, the UAE, the UK, France, Greece, Israel, Japan, China, Poland, Hungary, Montenegro, Germany, Italy, Russia, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey.
As Art Market Budapest founder and director Attila Ledényi highlighted, “Art Market Budapest is a special meeting place, and this year, we have put particular emphasis on increasing the number of encounters and their fruitfulness at Art Market Budapest. The fair is much more than just a survey of the industry: indeed, based on the number of our visitors and our exhibitors, each iteration of Art Market Budapest serves as a venue for millions of encounters among audience members, our guests, exhibitors, partners and art lovers in the space of just a few days.”
In 2019, Art Market Budapest focuses particularly on the contemporary fine art scene of Russia through its ART.RUS festival. This event aims to introduce the artistic output of a specific country or region with a rich cultural scene through a series of cultural programs. Art Market Budapest intends to showcase a rich selection of high-quality art from former socialist states to art professionals and the wider public as well. This is part of the reason for which Russia was selected as this year’s guest of honor. Another part of the reason is that the highly diverse and high-quality contemporary Russian fine art scene is unduly underrepresented in the world’s exhibition venues and art fairs: currently, Budapest is the only place outside Russia where such a wide selection of Russian art will be on display.
As a complementary program of international significance, the fair will host a multi-day event entitled Third Paradise, led by world-renown Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto. As a rare treat of the international art world, legendary Michelangelo Pistoletto will not only have his works displayed at Art Market Budapest but he will also be present at the fair in person. In cooperation with him as well as with the foundation he created, Art Market Budapest is presenting Pistoletto’s Third Paradise project, inspired by his artistic manifesto, as a multi-day complementary program of this year’s fair. Indeed, Cittadellarte (Fondazione Pistoletto) has partnered with Art Market Budapest to create a program of international significance, entitled THIRD PARADISE BUDAPEST 2019. Using art as a tool, this complex, festival-like series of exhibitions and programs aims to consider the questions of the sustainability of human existence and urban living, and of the preservation of the environment. As part of the major program, sponsored by E.On and associated with the international Energy Globe award ceremony, Pistoletto’s famous large-scale work The apple made whole again, also used as a symbol of Third Paradise, will be on display during Art Market Budapest in Millenáris Park, in the entrance hall of National Dance Theater Budapest.
Among the satellite events a special mention needs Art Photo Budapest, that continues to be the only international fair of art photography in Central and Eastern Europe, dedicating an entire exhibition hall to this popular art form. ART PHOTO BUDAPEST was founded in 2014 as a section of Art Market Budapest dedicated to the art of photography, and since then it has grown to be a highly regarded part of the international photography scene. At the 2019 iteration of Art Photo Budapest, there will be no shortage of treats for the ever-growing audience of art photography: as an example, the photographic works of legendary operatic tenor José Cura will make their art fair debut in Budapest. Exhibitors will include the foundation of Lucien Hervé, a world-known photographer of Hungarian descent, while the contemporary Hungarian art photography scene will be represented – among the portfolio of a number of Hungarian exhibitors – by the selection BAUHAUS CONTEMPORARY.
For all the duration of Art Market Budapest, the city of Budapest yet again becomes an attractive hub of the international art and art collection scene, an urban meeting place offering high-quality artistic content and a scenic environment to visitors.