From 18th of May, we have the pleasure to inform you that the gallery of Balassi Institute Brussels will reopen.

You can visit the live exhibition ’Retrospective’ of the Hungarian Roma painter József Ferkovics during opening hours, upon appointment. So far, the exhibition has been open for visits only virtually, on our facebook and instagram pages. The paintings of the artist being heavily hit by the coronavirus crisis can be reserved at the institute and bought directly from the artist. Please, support art and the artist, and chose a picture.

Opening hours: Monday and Wednesday from 10 A.M. to 3 P.M.
Do not forget to bring your mask !
Reservation: 00 3)9 07 50


József Ferkovics was born in Letenye, Zala county in 1961. After the divorce of his parents, he was placed into foster care. He started to draw everything he saw and experienced from an early age. His teachers noticed his talent and helped him to apply in several competitions. Despite his talent in drawing, the child-care institute sent him to Komló to be a miner apprentice. At the same time, he continued his artistic studies at the Secondary School of Fine and Applied Arts in Pécs with the guidance of graphic artist János Horváth. He met his biological parents only after he turned eighteen. This was the first time he discovered the Gypsy culture.

In 198e became a private student of the painters László Pajzs and Ern Fóti at the College of Fine and Applied Arts in Budapest. He got married and left college after 3 years to start working as a miner. In 1989, he moved to Nagykanizsa, looking for creative work. He started to teach and organize drawing classes for children. Meanwhile, he finished his college studies and got a degree in graphic design. He moved to Budapest, and in , at the request of the Roma newspaper Amaro Drom, he created a graphic series on the Holocaust, that later became his most famous oeuvre.

The Roma identity is of great importance for him. His paintings display symbolically the traditional values. His strengths are landscape and figurative representations; his oeuvre features genre paintings, sacred and symbolic artworks, nudes and portraits. His series of idols is a kind of a fame hall featuring prominent Roma people. The Holocaust series was born on the seventieth anniversary of the tragic events, expanding a series of earlier works of the same topic. His paintings of ancient Gypsy craftsmen depict long-forgotten professions. Characters, poverty and nature are common subjects of his paintings.

He uses different styles, but he has his own, unique way of expression. He has exhibited his works in in Hungary and around the world (Berlin, London, Naples, Rome, Beijing and Washington)