Gateways in Existence: The Tree as a Motif from Pieter Bruegel to Alexandre Hollan

Gateways in Existence presents works by contemporary artist Alexandre Hollan, born in Hungary (Budapest, 1933) and now residing in France, in the company of depictions of trees and landscapes by some of the most prominent masters in the history of European drawing and printmaking. Besides works by Hollan, viewable from 9 October in the recently revamped exhibition hall of the Museum of Fine Arts are compositions by the great classics of tree depictions and landscape art, including Wolfgang Huber, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Jan Brueghel the Elder, Claude Lorrain, Camille Corot, Rembrandt and Nicolas Poussin.

The selection of more than fifty outstanding works not only exemplifies some of the pinnacles of European landscape art but also offers an overview of the different techniques of graphic art: pen-and-ink drawing, coloured woodcut, copperplate engraving, etching, cliché-verre and acrylic painting. This is all made possible by the rich holdings of the Collection of Prints and Drawings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, including the significant group of artworks donated to the museum by Alexandre Hollan himself between 2003 and 2019. The Hungarian-born artist, a sensitive observer of the inner forces of trees, has gifted more than 150 of his works to the museum since 2003, of which an important selection of twenty-four pieces can be seen at this exhibition.