‘Angels and Architecture Imre Makovecz 90’ at the Budapest Art Gallery, Hungary, on the occasion of what would have been Imre Makovecz's 90th birthday. on 20 November 2025.

This exhibition will remain open until 1 February 2026.

This exhibition does not seek to present the architect’s entire body of work, but rather to convey his way of thinking, creating, and viewing life, the physical world,
and the spiritual world, as well as their intimate relationship through architecture. His work is colossal, with more than two thousand buildings built in Hungary, mainly in Transylvania but also abroad. He drew in an extraordinary and very precise manner. In this exhibition, numerous original drawings on tracing paper sketches are on display – which is very rare – and are often works of art in themselves. One can contemplate sketches of single-family homes, cultural centres, churches, towers and, towards the end of his life, collages and photos of landscapes reworked in pencil to reveal the beginnings of architecture that looks back at you and a world in the making between nature, man and architecture. This vision of architecture and its intrinsic relationship to the genesis of human beings is ever-present in his works. This constant quest to make the invisible visible and perceptible, to recreate this divine relationship between heaven and earth, between the material and the spiritual, between angels and men, is directly linked to his studies in the science of the mind. At a very young age, he discovered the work of Rudolph Steiner quickly wanted to put this thinking and these values into practical use in architecture. Part of the exhibition also presents his deep relationship with spiritual science. There are several films presenting his works, as well as a large model of the St. Michael’s Church in Budapest, which he designed towards the end of his life but which, to this day, has still not begun to be built, despite the phenomenal architectural and spiritual value it represents. In this respect, this work surpasses anything he has designed before and is comparable to Antonio Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia by Antonio Gaudi. It is like a torch for the spiritual future of humanity. I therefore advise anyone who would like to discover or learn more about the architectural work of Imre Makovecz to spend at least a weekend in Budapest to have the opportunity to see this exhibition. There are also guided tours in Hungarian, French and English that I conduct on specific dates to provide a better understanding of this architect’s work and his oeuvre, which goes far beyond architecture itself.

Budapest, 26 December 2025
Nathalie Grekofski