Around 1900, a series of reform movements emerge that break through the mainstream of modern, technocratic and industrial developments, and in many areas of life seek alternative possibilities and new ways. Enthusiastic, open-minded and inspired by an attitude to life that ventures ideologically, artistically and socially into hitherto unknown zones, one wants to oppose the harsh realities to a different, creative, profound and experiential reality. These diverse aspects and their interdisciplinary interweaving often remained hidden in historical retrospectives. In 2018, an exhibition in an art gallery in Budapest titled Hidden Stories - The Life Reform Movements and Art offered unique and surprising insights into the interconnectedness of people and works. In the subsequent conference of the same name, experts from science, art and culture devoted themselves to the hitherto little-known relationships between artists and individual reform movements. The resulting volume reveals and presents the international effectiveness of artists from Hungary as well as from other countries, who have shaped a changed attitude to life in the expressions of music, dance and performing arts. In artist colonies, garden centers and educational reform projects, they created specially places that allowed a changed lifestyle. There are always different ideological, religious and spiritual views in the background that are analyzed here.

Series edited by: Johanna Hopfner, Claudia Stöckl