Bukta Imre: Letűnt vidéki állatok

Short listing

A solo exhibition by Bukta Imre exploring rural ways of life, memory and change.

Full exhibition text

Opening: 5 March 2026 at 18:00 – Godt Galéria (Bartók Béla út 11-13. )

Opened by theatre director Horváth Csaba

On view until 25 April, Tuesday to Friday 10:00–14:00 and Saturday 10:00–13:00

Bukta Imre: Karácsonyi kaktusz (2026.)

The most influential master of contemporary Hungarian visual art, and a significant figure internationally, lives and works in Mezőszemere, a village in Heves County. Bukta Imre (1952) has participated in the Venice Biennale several times and exhibited at the São Paulo Biennial. His works have also been shown at, among other venues, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Bozar in Brussels, MűvészetMalom in Szentendre, the Landesmuseum in Linz, the Art Museum in Jyväskylä, the Kunsthall in Lund and the Millenium Museum in Beijing. His first retrospective was organised by MODEM in Debrecen in 2008. This was followed by major survey exhibitions that attracted considerable interest, including those at Műcsarnok in 2012, Kieselbach Galéria in 2019 and Godot Intézet in 2022, each accompanied by an important book. Bukta Imre has been represented by Godot Galéria since 2004.

Bukta Imre: Lakodalom nézők (2025.)

He began his career as a self-taught artist in the 1970s. His art is closely connected to the way of life and culture of Hungarian people living in the countryside and working in agriculture. From the outset, his subjects have been the objects, places and people of everyday working life, which he depicts using an exceptionally varied range of means: in his paintings, he freely uses all kinds of natural materials that come to hand (hair, wood, maize, tiles, matchsticks, etc.), combining them in the manner of assemblage. In his objects, installations and performances, he juxtaposes everyday implements from rural material culture as a matter of course, or builds them into unique pictorial-mechanical constructions. His portraits, compositions and scenes can be understood as distinctive sociological studies, but rather than adopting the perspective of an outsider or a detached analyst, Bukta sees and presents this particular world, laden with bittersweet undertones, from within. His outlook is at times ironic, at times melancholic, at others critical (of society) or forgiving, but he always approaches his subjects with exceptional empathy.

Bukta Imre: Mocskos disznó (2025.)

Bukta Imre’s latest paintings (2025-26) are about the domestic animals and creatures of the fields that were once characteristic of the Hungarian countryside – and, of course, about us, people today. What if, on a beautiful evening in a village, we were to encounter a cow ambling home, or a pig wallowing in the mud and grunting happily? There is no longer a single cow in the village where the artist lives, yet he works in a former cowshed – its lingering presence is inescapable. Different scents, different smells, sounds, different people. On the canvases, deep-seated childhood memories mingle with the realism of today. Visitors stepping into Godot Galéria can discover masterpieces by Bukta, rich in painterly innovation and imbued with a distinctive atmosphere.

Godot Galéria

1114 Budapest, Bartók Béla út 11-13.

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