Csongrád Art Colony marks 50th anniversary with exhibition in Szeged
The Csongrád Art Colony is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a retrospective exhibition that opened Thursday at the Department of Art and Art History of the Juhász Gyula Faculty of Education at the University of Szeged.
The show, on view through October 18, features paintings, graphic works, sculptures and mixed-media pieces by Hungarian and international artists who have worked in Csongrád over the past half-century.
Founded in 1975 by painters Gábor Nagy, Tamás Szikora, Gábor Dienes, Károly Klimó and Sándor Aranyi with support from the town of Csongrád, the colony has grown into a hub for international artistic exchange. Artists from around the world — from neighboring European countries to as far as Australia — have visited regularly, along with students and faculty from Hungarian and foreign universities, including Darmstadt and Passau.
An artists’ house was added in 1986, equipped with specialized studios and a bronze foundry. Although the founders were primarily painters, the colony has hosted a wide range of creative camps and symposia, covering bronze, concrete, blacksmithing, photography, paper, printmaking and watercolor. This spring, aluminum was introduced as a new material for collaborative work.
The colony’s oldest recurring program is the Csongrád Plein Air International Artcamp, held 35 times to date. The artists’ house also regularly hosts summer camps for students from art schools across Hungary.
A tradition of the colony is that participants donate one work to the artists’ house. The current exhibition presents a cross-section of these contributions, including bronze portrait busts by sculptor Sándor Dudás, a former head of the colony, who depicted fellow artists working in Csongrád.
Photos: Szilvia Molnar / Szegedify
