The exhibition of Zoltan (1907 – 1965) and Madeleine Kemeny (1905 – 1995), classics of European art of the latter part of the twentieth century, was the major event at the Danubiana. The exhibition showed the works of both artists from the collection of Karl van Stuijvenberg, a Dutch collector of the Cobra, who presents their art at solo and group exhibitions of this group. Their work is referred to as “experimental art of an extraordinary couple”. Although they came from Budapest, they lived in Paris until the Second World War and later settled in Zurich. Zoltan Kemeny emerged onto the art scene in the second half of the 1950s with his remarkable relief-pictures, welding and soldering metal parts to create organic compositions. In 1964 he won the Grand Prix for sculpture at the Venice Biennale. Madeleine Szemere-Kemeny created her major works between 1942 and 1956. She preferred to work with delicate materials, paper, cardboard, graphite, lacquers and pigments. She was concerned with expressive figurative work that Dubuffet classified as Art Brut. Both artists presented their work at the first Cobra exhibition in 1949. Later Madeleine Kemeny abandoned artistic creation. Karel van Stuijvenberg deserves credit for rediscovering her work and including it in the Cobra retrospective held in Paris in 1982 and in other cities.
