Recent Acquisitions of Hungarian Art: Gifts from the Salgo Trust for Education

Founded in 1991, the Salgo Trust for Education managed the remarkable and wide-ranging art collection of Nicolas M. Salgo (1914–2005), a Hungarian-American business executive and US Ambassador. In 2022, the Zimmerli Art Museum received a gift of paintings and photographs from the Salgo collection that adds long-desired artists and subjects to the museum’s permanent collection. Joining a select group of Hungarian works already in the collection, the Salgo gifts extend the strength of the Zimmerli’s holdings into Eastern Europe and forge a closer connection between the museum’s permanent collections of European and Russian art.

The Salgo gifts featured in this gallery include works by Mihály Munkácsy and Josef Rippl-Ronai, two Hungarian painters who pursued their careers in Paris. Munkácsy’s vibrant flower still life and Rippl-Ronai’s expressionistic landscape introduce these important categories of painting into the Zimmerli’s European art collection with excellent examples. The Salgo gift also increases the representation of women artists in the European collection with works painted by Eszter Mattioni and Margit Anna as well as a portrait of the artist Méla Müller. Ten photographs by Andre Kertesz are the first by this important modernist in the Zimmerli’s growing photography collection, and they show the artist developing his compositional style in his native country.

Organized by Christine Giviskos, Curator of Prints, Drawings, and European Art