The Guardian of Your - Skin From Fabulon to Contemporary Beauty Care
We scroll through influencer content showcasing endless variations of multi-step skincare routines, search five-star product reviews for cautionary comments, and choose between Korean minimalist designs, herbal products adorned with floral illustrations, and brightly colored, “shelfie”-friendly packaging in drugstores—all while obsessively researching the right active ingredients. Yet being beautiful in Hungary was not always like this.
Schedule
The Guardian of Your Skin exhibition looks back to Fabulon, one of the most popular beauty brands of the state-socialist era, to understand how beauty routines, products, objects, retail environments, and advertising communication have changed over the past fifty years. And why Fabulon? Launched in 1971 by the Kőbánya Pharmaceutical Factory (Richter Gedeon), the brand rose meteorically to become a domestic pioneer of conscious beauty care, Western-style marketing practices, and design-driven packaging.
The exhibition examines together the slogan forever etched into public memory (“Fabulon, the guardian of your skin”), Ági Pataki’s modeling career, the iconic Fabulon mosaic at Kálvin Square, internationally acclaimed advertising campaigns, and award-winning packaging designs. This exploration not only sheds light on the design culture of the 1970s and 1980s, but also creates connections between members of the X, Y, and Z generations. Enriched with contemporary perspectives and viewed through the lens of today’s consumer, the Fabulon story also reveals how representations of women, beauty ideals, and communication directed toward female consumers have evolved over the decades.
The exhibition is the second chapter of Object Fetish, an exhibition project based on the article series by Kitti Mayer and Piroska Novák. Its first exhibition, Honey, have you ever heard of “zacskós-tej-tartó”? (2024), explored the object biography of the plastic milk-pouring container.
Main Sponsor: Rossmann Hungary
Supporter: KEVE
Collaborating Partners:
Budapest Poster Gallery; Dániel Erdély and Jakab Erdély; Ernst Gallery; Dóra Gálné Galambos; Kara&Co.; Dávid Kurucz; Hungarian Museum of Trade and Tourism; Hungarian National Museum Public Collection Centre – Museum of Applied Arts; Maruderm; Nerds; Ági Pataki; Pigmenta Art Print Lab; Revuele; Museum of Fine Arts – Central European Research Institute for Art History Archive and Documentation Center; Juli Veres
Curated by: edit (Lilla Gollob, Kitti Mayer, Réka Vikárius, Noémi Viski)
Research: Piroska Novák
Graphic Design: Kira Koroknai
Guests are invited to raise a glass with wines from Villa Gyetvai at the opening reception.