Once secret Kovesi collection finds final home in Miskolc

Budapest, December 22 (MTI) – The secret collection of 19th-20th century Hungarian paintings assembled by Budapest butcher Istvan Kovesi during the communist era has found its final home in Miskolc, in northern Hungary.

The 115 paintings by renowned artists such as Jozsef Rippl-Ronai, Laszlo Mednyanszky, Janos Vaszary, Sandor Bortnyik, Istvan Szonyi, Bela Czobel, Vilmos Aba-Novak, Lajos Kassak, Imre Amos and Margit Anna have been bought for 795 million forints (EUR 2.3m) by the National Bank of Hungary under its recently launched programme aiming to recover and keep art treasures at home.

Kovesi’s fabled collection kept private for almost 50 years has been put on public showing in the Miskolc Gallery and will be permanently displayed in the city’s Herman Otto Museum after June.

A concentration camp survivor, Kovesi took over running a kosher meat shop in Budapest in 1957. He used his earnings to purchase paintings consulting art historians and assembled his collection between the 1960s and the 1980s.

The vast collection he kept in his flat in the 13th district in central Budapest was first put on public display with the consent of his children in a Budapest private gallery in 2013 and afterwards in the museum in Gyor.

Photo: MTI

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters