Publications

Imagination/Idea. The Beginning of Hungarian Conceptual Art. The László Beke Collection, 1971

Editors: Dóra Hegyi, Zsuzsa László, and Eszter Szakács
Publisher: JRP|Ringier, Zurich
Content: 368 pages
ISBN: 978-3-03764-318-1
Year: 2014

In August 1971, László Beke, renowned Hungarian art historian and curator of several progressive art events of the 1970s, sent out a call to 28 artists, asking them to submit sheets that would fit into A4 document folders, following the concept: WORK = the DOCUMENTATION OF THE IMAGINATION/IDEA.

Beke arranged and preserved the sheets he received in folders, but for most of the last forty years they have not been available to a wide audience, and they have rarely appeared in exhibitions. It is only in the last five or six years that, due to a renewed interest in the collection, IMAGINATION has been featured in several exhibitions, both in Hungary and internationally, as well as being presented as a publication in itself.

A comprehensive selection of these important documents of conceptual art is now published as facsimiles with English translations, alongside László Beke’s essay describing the context of the project and biographical information about the participants.

With works by Gábor Attalai, Imre Bak, Miklós Erdély, Tamás Hencze, György Jovánovics, Ilona Keserü, Dezsô Korniss, László Lakner, János Major, Gyula Pauer, Géza Perneczky, Sándor Pinczehelyi, Tamás Szentjóby, Endre Tót, Péter Türk, among others.

This publication is available at ERSTE Foundation Library.

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Florian Bauer

Director Social Finance, Sustainability and Innovation
Since 2023, Florian Bauer has been responsible for social finance, sustainability and social innovation at ERSTE Foundation. Prior to this role, Florian worked in the NGO & Social Entrepreneurship sector for more than 13 years. He led the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership (REEEP), an international multilateral NGO that works to accelerate market-based deployment of renewable energy and energy efficient systems in developing countries, and was Managing Director & COO of the Impact Hub Vienna. From 2020-2023, Florian established strategic alliances with key partners and helped to create innovative semantic technology solutions at Semantic Web Company (SWC), a leading IT company in semantic AI solutions.