The 34th Budapest Spring Festival opened on Friday with a guest exhibition of self-portraits by Hungarian artists from Florence’s Uffizi Gallery in the Budapest History Museum (BTM). Human Resources Minister Zoltán Balog said at the opening that this year’s Festival offers twice as many performances as the previous one and state funding for the event has also been doubled.
Mr. Balog said the ubiquitous selfies of the Internet culture are a much more widespread and general phenomenon, although the desire for self-portraits is an old one, as illustrated by the Uffizi’s large collection of such paintings, some of them dating back to the Renaissance. The Uffizi's collection includes 24 self-portraits from 21 Hungarian painters and last year it presented some of them at a special exhibition.
An extended version of this exhibition is now the opening piece of the Budapest Spring Festival, complemented by the self-portraits of two contemporary Hungarian painters, Ilona Keserü and László Fehér, both commissioned by the Florentine gallery.
Csaba Káel, head of the Festival’s organising committee said that this year’s event features more than 170 performances at 50 locations, including 20 premieres, of which six are world premieres. The Festival lasts until 6 April. The detailed program and tickets are available on the festival’s website.
(Ministry of Human Resources)
