Éva Forgács: Challenging National Art Histories

The great number of émigrés in the interwar period challenges the concept of national art historical narratives. If an artist, having been raised and educated in Hungary, chooses to live in France, Germany, or the US, to which country’s culture does s/he belong? Does artistic formation weigh as much as the new context that allowed him/her to develop as an artist? Can his/her achievements be seen originating from their country, are they reflecting the values of the new one? Museums designate artists to the country the citizen of which they died. Thus, Kandinsky was French, born in Moscow. Moholy-Nagy was American, born at Bácsborsód. This, however, does not answer the question, which is further complicated by later efforts to re-graft artists to the culture of their country of origin. Outlining patterns of emigration related to the time, the medium, and the adjustment to the new country, I will demonstrate the complications of re-grafting in the example of Victor Vasarely.

Éva Forgács is a Professor Emerita of art history at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME) in Budapest, Hungary, and an Adjunct Professor at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. She has been active as a curator, art critic, and essayist. Her books include several monographs and two volumes of essays published in her native Hungary, as well as the co-edited volume Between Worlds: A Sourcebook of Central European Avant-Gardes, 1910-1930 (The MIT Press, Boston, 2002). Her recent title, Malevich and Interwar Modernism: Russian Art and the International of the Square (Bloomsbury, London, 2022), examines the Russian and European interwar avant-garde.