Rediscovered visions: dialogues between drawing and painting
The Stengel Collection in Florence announces a new exhibition to commemorate the centenary year since the birth of Hungarian postwar artist Karl Stengel (1925–2017). The exhibition at Palazzo Rosselli del Turco offers a unique opportunity to discover his remarkable life and art through XX paintings, works on paper and mixed-media compositions spanning the 1970s to the 2010s. This retrospective showcase also features Stengel’s personal ‘drawing diaries’ – albums and journals filled with his drawings and writings – shown publicly for the first time, offering rare insights into his dynamic, introspective and highly expressive practice.
Through his distinctive visual language that blends abstraction with representation, Stengel’s work evokes the inner world of human experience, exploring art as a form of emotional and philosophical expression. His career is also deeply rooted in the historical and cultural landscape of the 20th century: born in Novi Sad, his early years were shaped by the upheavals of World War II, including his service as a soldier and imprisonment in a Siberian Gulag, where – incredibly – he discovered his love of art and held his first exhibition. He later trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest and, after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, continued his studies at the Academy in Munich, where he settled and immersed himself in the European arts scene.
The exhibition traces the international artistic traditions that inspired and enriched Stengel’s practice, particularly during his extensive travels around world from the 1960s onward. His signature use of spontaneous brushstrokes and bright colours – evocative of his long-sought political and social freedom – has drawn comparison with European and American postwar movements such as Abstract Expressionism, Art Informel and German Expressionism. Works such as Untitled 24 (1987) and Dreiklang (1990) echo the style of other 20th-century artists like Henri Matisse and Cy Twombly, frequently cited by Stengel for their influence.
Dates: 4 March – 11 April 2025
Address: The Stengel Collection, Palazzo Rosselli del Turco, Via dei Serragli, 17, 50124 Florence, Italy
Opening times: Monday to Friday, from 10am-1pm and 3pm-6pm
The exhibition showcases Stengel’s distinctive style, which blends abstraction and representation while bridging European and American 20th-century artistic traditions; reflects the profound impact of personal and political events in the artist’s life and work, from his imprisonment in a Siberian Gulag in the 1940s to fleeing the Hungarian Revolution in 1956.
