Commissioned Memory

1965 | Project

The historical part of the Hungarian exhibition in Auschwitz had been in preparation from the spring of 1963 by the Museum of Contemporary History, under the direction of Emil Horn. As a spectacular complement to the material based on documents and photographs—and certainly as a critique of it—the commissioning Ministry for Culture decided to order a large fine arts collection.

The project was carried out by the Lectorate for Fine and Applied Arts, but in the absence of sufficient time, without an open call or even an invitation-only competition, with the direct appointment of the artists. The time available for the work was extremely short: the artists were faced with the task at the end of December 1964, their small-scale sketches were approved in mid-January and the finished works were delivered in mid-March. The exhibition opened in April.