Dancing 1925, Hungarian artists in Parisian nightlife exhibition opened at National Gallery – PHOTOS

A chamber exhibition presenting drawings by three Hungarian artists on the nightlife of Paris in the 1920s reflecting on the euphoria after the first world war opened at the Hungarian National Gallery on Saturday.

In the focus of the exhibition is Dancing (1925), an album presenting twelve lithographs by painter, graphic artist, illustrator and set designer Marcell Vertes who, following the collapse of the Soviet Republic, moved from Budapest to Vienna and later to Paris in 1920. There he frequented nightclubs and bars where he made sketches of guests dancing on the floor, jazz musicians and even people waiting at dawn to leave for home. He became famous of imitating Toulouse-Lautrec’s style and in 1952 was “hand-double” for Lautrec in the film Moulin Rouge. Vertes’s work on the film earned him two Academy Awards, for Best Costume Designer and Best Production Design, according to the exhibition’s booklet.