Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 16. (Budapest, 1997)

ÁCS Piroska: Lechner Ödön köztéri szobrának története

title of "Architect at a Roof-Raising Ceremony" by Ferenc Vámos; it represented Lechner holding a roll of plans and wearing his smock among scaffoldings decorated with flowers. One of the "discoveries" of the competition was young Imre Görömbey. The main figure of his project, a meditating man sitting with an introspective expression on his face, was a well-balanced combination of sensitivity and outstanding technique. The youth collapsed at the foot of the double cross decorating the pedestal was also remarkable, even if the general tone of the work was finally deemed as somewhat too loud and sepulchral. Once the impassioned polemic in the press had ebbed away, a further meeting of the committee was held under the chairmanship of city alderman Endre Liber: it was decided that a new, restricted competition would be initiated, in which all artists having received extra recognition in the last two contests would be invited to participate on the side of Farkas, Cser and Ligeti. This third round was to differ from the previous two in that the participants were requested to subjoin a series of study-portraits of Lechner to their actual project. The deadline of this new competition was fixed on the 30th May 1930. On the 7th June, a short communiqué informed anyone interested that the jury had at last bestowed the awards. The strangeness of the jury's decision surpassed all that had happened before, for the study-drawings were finally not taken into consideration for the assessment. The first position among the fourteen contestants was given to the portrait realized by Béla Farkas. The second price was won by Ottó Kalotai-Kreipel, and the third, by Károly Cser. Lajos Petri was given special praise by the jury. The awarded study by Béla Farkas certainly rendered the traits of Lechner faithfully, but the head was resting on a hand cut at the wrist, which was rather disturbing and conferred a rough-and-ready feeling to the whole work. Moreover, the dimensions of the statue (barely life-size) were not appropriate if it was to become the pendant of Jókai

's sitting portrait. The jury therefore announced another special competition in order to find an acceptable architectural solution. It is today rather difficult to reconstruct the different factors and interests at work in the attribution of the awards. One thing is however sure: the repeated rounds of the Lechner competition did not do any good, on the contrary. Ö. Fülöp Beck's mémoires provide some elements helping to retrace the reasons of all this procrastination: it appears that the jury's slowness was mainly due to a lack of financial means

21 No matter how often the competition was reiterated, no matter the amount of publicity in the press, no donations were made after the first few (amounting to 300-400 pengő each). Which meant that almost thirty artists worked for months without adequate financial cover. This was one of the reasons why the jury finally settled for the portrait version of the statue, costing between 2000 and 3000 pengő. However, it turned out that the town council was not prepared to pay its contribution of 10 000 pengő, as this sum had been allowed for the realization of a full-size memorial - the only way to receive the financial support promised by the Council of Budapest. Béla Farkas was thus finally commissioned to make a full-size portrait of Ödön Lechner seated on a plain pedestal. According to Beck, Zsigmond Kisfaludi-Stróbl and János Pásztor also contributed to his work, on which Lechner's main attribute, the house-cap, is missing. For some mysterious reason, Farkas represented the old gentleman - whose appearance had always been elegant during his life-time - wearing a crumpled overcoat. The full-sized moulding and cast were realized at the beginning of 1932. The costs of the statue amounted in the end to 16000 pengő. Two more problems remained to be solved: on one hand, the design and decoration of the pedestal, and on the other, the site on which the statue was finally to stand. Some