Fabó Beáta - Gall, Anthony: I came from the East to a City of Great Palaces. Károly Kós, the early years 1907-1914 (Budapest, 2013)
Influences
HI The drawings are from the handwritten and illustrated booklet entitled Erdélyország népének építése TRAVEL EXPERIENCES IN TRANSYLVANIA, SUMMER 1907 ‘While I was a student of architecture, I would be awarded a stipend of a few hundred crowns each summer by the Ministry of Culture to be able to travelfar and wide in Transylvania and study its folk art. I paid my gratitude to Elek Lippich for recommending me for the stipend by summarising my impressions in a bookfor him. I wrote this booklet myself, I made the illustrations, I bound the book in raw canvas woven in Kalotaszeg and my wife - only myfiancée at the time - embroidered the cover. Lippich liked the volume so much that he wrote a paper about it in the journal ‘Magyar Iparművészet’ (Hungarian Applied Art)’. KOS 1996:111 It was in his secondary school years that Kós had his first intensive experience of the Kalotaszeg region. From then on, he made a point of preferably touring in a different region of Transylvania every summer on the Ministry of Culture stipends he received as a university student - first on his own, then with his fellow students. He introduced Transylvania to his best friend Zrumeczky, to writer Zsigmond Móricz and Finnish architect Gallen-Kallela. In the summer of 1907, in his final year, with his fellow students Károly Machlup, János Prokisch and Tibor Révész Kós took a one-month tour in Transylvania and summarised his impressions in a booklet called The Architecture of the Transylvanian People dedicated to Elek Lippich, who had given him the stipend for the journey. The book existed in one single handwritten copy, but later, in 1909, the spring and autumn issues of A Ház published excerpts from it, with comments by Lippich. A few years later, in 1910-11 Kós wrote a similar booklet, which, in turn, was published immediately in Magyar Iparművészet, whose editor at the time was Kálmán Györgyi, father of Kós' fellow student and friend, Dénes Györgyi. ‘The style of Transylvanian folk architecture. The Saxons brought the Western Middle Ages to Transylvania as a gift and our people turned it into an ethnic gothic style. The churches ofValkó (Väleni), Körösfő (Izvoru Crisului), Gy(erő)monostor (Mänästireni) are all Hungarian Gothic in style. Even if later ages, especially the German renaissance and Baroque did have an impact on its superficialfeatures - the ornamentation, some roof structures, somefurniture shapes and certain contours - its spirit has remained completely medieval. And just as the folk art of the Hungarians of Transylvania is a direct descendant of the Middle Ages, it is my humble proposition that the National Style about to be born now can only have the Middle Ages for one of its parents. It can only be a healthy artistic movement if it's based on the existent traditions. Our people have accepted the medieval as the base of their style and has clung to it to this very day, having managed to turn it into their very own national style. The basis ofHungarian folk art is the art of the Middle Ages and the basis of our national art is folk art’.K0S I906:Iia Kvhvllömmri ■ (tj tnpvyi ■ Irrnrfb’tóh H Graveposts from the Küküllő (Târnava-Micâ) region 36
