Press Releases

Budapest, November 17, 2021 16:00

Magyar Telekom gives access to its special heritage built up by its legal predecessors, when it opens the gates of its fine arts collection to hold a charitable auction, the proceeds of which will be spent on the digital development of the visitor experience of Ludwig Museum. The public charitable auction of some sensational rarities will be held at 18:00 on December 01 at Ludwig Museum, hosted by Nóra Winkler.

Magyar Telekom’s legal predecessors started a contemporary fine arts collection in the nineties. The works were not only exhibited in the office buildings for the benefit of the employees, but also at exhibitions held at the former headquarters building on Krisztina krt and at prestigious cultural institutions. Several significant publications, articles, books and albums have been published about the events including JövőKép and TérErő.

When the company moved to the new headquarters and adopted the agile methodology, its culture and priorities changed. Magyar Telekom focuses now on digitization and the relevant cultural-training projects, in which arts play an important, but only indirect role. That is why the decision was made that most of the collection will be sold at a charitable auction exclusive to employees and a public one held at 18:00 o’clock on December 1.

 “In the future, we wish to support cultural initiatives more closely related to our long-term vision, therefore we offer the proceeds of the public auction held on December 1 to be spent on developing the visitor experience of a prestigious player of Hungary’s contemporary art landscape, Ludwig Museum. At the same time, we also organize a smaller, in-house auction for our employees, because we have many works of art that might be most appreciated by our colleagues. The proceeds of that auction will be transferred to our Magenta Unit Foundation, established with the purpose of helping employees that have fallen upon hardship due to the pandemic,” commented Magyar Telekom’s CEO, Tibor Rékasi on the purpose of the auctions.

Before the auction, the paintings will be exhibited at the 1 floor hall of Ludwig Museum on December 1 from 10:00 o’clock.
You can attend to bid from 18:00 o’clock on December 1 at Ludwig Museum subject to preliminary registration.
You can access the catalogue of the public auction HERE.
To access the full material of the auction, click on the www.axioart.com link of the arts trade site where you can bid online during the auction, after registration.

About Magyar Telekom’s collection
Magyar Telekom’s contemporary fine art collection was started in the nineties and consists mostly of paintings. In its endeavors to promote culture, Matáv had mainly focused on music, thus the collection includes several works inspired by musical pieces, collected in the framework of the Music for our eyes visual program.

At the same time, Westel started to collect works submitted to its “Oplogo” contest. They promoted two major exhibitions in the 2000s, where 12 outstanding artists submitted a total of 144 works to the Jövőkép and TérErő projects, and later some of these works were also added to the collection. The very popular exhibitions were accompanied by the publication of a richly illustrated album, titled JövőKép, which won a Beautiful Hungarian Book Award at the 2003 Week of Books.

Some of the music-themed paintings pay homage to the greatest representatives of the genre, like Ferenc Lantos, who elaborated the integrated system of visual and music education, Hommage á Sári József from 1989 or Róbert Várady’s Hommage a Bach I-II. András Wolsky’s abstract painting of three batons (Leonard Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan and Ferencsik János).

The collection features several works representing master and disciple relationships, an example of which are the rare and very unusual Indian-inspired Taoist-themed fans by a student of Ferenc Lantos, Róbert Swierkiewicz. We find a master and disciple relationship in case of Károly Klimó and András Gaál, too. Gábor Roskó’s diorama-like boxes titled Székely wedding and Encounter in Bagdad, and his colorful aquarelle from 2008, titled 2n d bite are also very special. In the photo category, Demeter Balla’s work from 1976, titled Bed, which exists in only one copy, is a real rarity.

The works of Ádám Zoltán, Bada Tibor, Balla Attila, Balla Demeter, Balogh László, Barabás Márton, Barakonyi Zsombor, Bernát András, Bocz Gyula, Bukta Imre, Chilf Mária, Csurka Eszter, drMáriás (Máriás Béla), Duliskovich Bazil, efZámbó István, feLugossy László, Ferenczy Zsolt, Gál András, Győri László, Kelemen (Kettenbrücke) Károly, Kéri László, Klimó Károly, Köves Éva, Lantos Ferenc, Lengyel András, Nádler István, Nagy Judit, Orosz István, Paizs László, Roskó Gábor, Soós Tamás, Swierkiewicz Róbert, Szegedi Csaba, Szurcsik József, Szűcs Attila, Tóth Dávid, Várady Róbert, Varga Patrícia Minerva, Wolsky András will be auctioned at the charitable event.