“Not only did we try to displace reality; reality was no longer in the object. Reality was in the painting.” Pablo Picasso

Csontváry is one of the most enigmatic figures in Hungarian painting. The unique colours of his canvases and his visionary imagery give his art its distinctive character, with themes often inspired by his travels. Yet whether he was depicting the Keleti Railway Station, the landscapes of Upper Hungary, or sites in the Holy Land, he considered it his mission to capture the air, the light, the “sunway”(a term he created). The painter visited Paris several times during the first decade of the twentieth century, where he held a solo exhibition in 1907. However, like so many artists, Csontváry was truly recognized only after his death (1919). By the end of the 1940s, his works were also praised by foreign critics. In 1947, Csontváry’s paintings were exhibited at the Hungarian Embassy in Paris. Béla Czóbel’s letter to Picasso has survived, in which he points out the Csontváry exhibition. Picasso did indeed visit the exhibition, and according to accounts, he praised the Hungarian painter with these words: “I didn’t know that there was another great painter of the 20^th century besides myself.”