A Storm in Europe: Béla Kádár, Hugó Scheiber and ‘Der Sturm’ Gallery in Berlin

24th November 2003 - 18th January 2004

A Storm in Europe will be a major highlight of the 2003/2004 exhibitions calendar at the Ben Uri Gallery. Continuing the museum’s collaboration with other museums and galleries in Europe, the exhibition has been curated by Mariann Gergely, the Chief Curator of the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest who is the world expert on Béla Kádár, and is produced in collaboration between the Ben Uri and the Hungarian Cultural Centre in London, as part of Magyar Magic: Hungary in Focus from 2003 to 2004. 

A Storm in Europe is a timely reappraisal of two avant-garde Hungarian-Jewish artists, Béla Kádár (1877-1956) and Hugó Scheiber (1873-1950). In 1921, the first joint show on Kádár and Scheiber was organised at Max Hevesi’s Salon in Vienna. A Storm in Europe situates the growth of their fame during the second decade of the twentieth century in the context of the now-legendary ‘Der Sturm’ (The Storm) gallery in Berlin, whose owner Herwarth Walden promoted the two artists following their exhibition in Vienna, giving each of them solo exhibitions at his influential gallery during the 1920s. 

Richard Aronowitz-Mercer, the Ben Uri’s Director, says: “Kádár was a visionary modernist who used bold colours and simplified forms to conjure images of peasant life in Hungary, and his work was also strongly influenced by the German Expressionists. Scheiber’s vision was generally darker and had a subtext of isolation and violence. A Storm in Europe will be a distinctive and thought-provoking exhibition that casts fresh light on the legacy of these two artists who were stars of their day, but whose glow has faded in the intervening eighty years.”

For further details and press images, please contact Elinor Kaye on 020 7604 3991 or elinor@benuri.org.uk