Koller - In the Wake of a Legend

György Koller, the Creative Community of Etching Artists and the Koller Gallery

If the aim of this book would only be to report about the operations and the most important exhibitions of the Koller Gallery in the past 60 years, it would already be an indispensable contribution to the history of Hungarian art trade. György Koller wondrously managed during the circumstances of communist dictatorship to receive the permission to trade of the authorities and so in 1953 the Munkácsy Mihály Creative Community of Etching Artists was founded. Koller advised the artists to use the technique of limited edition graphics as they could be sold better, and it also meant that artworks of high quality were affordable for a broader public. For the sales he developed his own net of agents. The geniality of the idea was soon visible: his leading artists gained such popularity they would have never dreamed of, all the while forming the artistic taste of a whole generation. Above all The Koller was not a gallery, rather the gallerist, György Koller, turned into an institution.