Artists from Oradea 1860-1940

The permanent exhibition that can be visited on the first floor of wing A1 presents the artists of Oradea in a period when the city undergoes many transformations, placing it from 1878 among the cities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The architectural personality of the city, also known as Little Paris, is completed by the construction of important buildings in eclectic and neoclassical style and after 1900, the secession style, gaining recognition in the Central and South-Eastern landscape.

The creative emulation climate makes an impact on the artistic phenomenon as well. The number of artists practicing various art genres in the city keeps growing during this period. In this first part of the exhibition dedicated to the city’s art history we will discover academic painters (Mezey Lajos, Böhm Paul, Bihari Sándor) and others who adopted a European inspired stylistic and thematic modernity (Tibor Ernö, Endrey Sándor, Ioan Bușiția, Nicolae Irimie, Macalik Alfred, Barat Moric, Mund Hugo, Tibor Ernö, Coriolan Munteanu etc.).

Interwar graphic art brings forward remarkable artists approaching highly topical themes on the continent (the danger of Nazism – Leon Alex) and also themes inspired by the daily life in the settlement on the banks of “Crișul Repede” River (Grünbaum Ernő, Balogh István).

Sculpture introduces a few outstanding representatives who lived during both historical eras on which we are focusing in the exhibition (Kara Mihaly, Iosif Fekete).

Oradea’s fine art has achieved recognition in a context of a deeply individualized architectural development, the artists being open to various artistic expressions consistently with the aesthetic orientations of the modernism.