Judit Reigl
Unvergleichliches Vergnügen / Incomparable Pleasure (1952-53)
Oil and collage on canvas
134.6 x 88.3 cm
Collection Kálmán Makláry, Budapest © Fonds de dotation Judit Reigl (photo: György Darabos)

Judit Reigl
Mass writing (1960)
Oil on canvas
230 x 205 cm
Fonds de dotation Judit Reigl, promised gift Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin © Fonds de Dotation Judit Reigl

To commemorate the centenary of Judit Reigl’s birth and the acquisition of three main works by this Hungarian-born French artist (1923 – 2020), the Neue Nationalgalerie is presenting her first-ever solo exhibition in a German museum. The Nationalgalerie is the first public collection in Germany to own works by this important painter closely associated with the French Art Informel movement in the 1950s.

This overview of Reigl’s career showcases a major figure in European art from the second half of the 20th century. On view are sixteen, mostly large-scale paintings from Reigl’s painted oeuvre ‒ works both abstract and figurative. The artist began her studies at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in Budapest. In 1950, the rise of Stalinism led Riegl to flee her homeland and settle in Paris. Although her early, mostly dream-like paintings were still indebted to Surrealism, she turned to lyrical abstraction at the start of the 1950s. Figurative elements are repeatedly found in Riegl’s paintings. In the mid-1960s, they would culminate in the male torsos in her Man series.