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
‘The Young Ones’ denoted a loose grouping of university students, whose attitude was much shaped by the workshop-community nature of the university design studios. The Kalotaszeg/Tara Cälatei region, at the far end of the mysterious land of Transylvania and the church of Körösfő (Izvoru Crisului) surrounded by its grassy graveyard became a kind of imaginary as well as real focal point and pilgrimage destination for those discussing modern Hungarian national art and architecture seated around tables at Budapest cafés. The new, Hungarian style art received encouragement from influential civil servants and other members of the upper society, including József Bartóky and, mainly, Elek Lippich, highranking official of the Ministry of Culture. Lippich published a paper in the 3/1908 issue of Magyar Iparművészet - a periodical supported by the Ministry - illustrated with sketches and designs by young architects, mainly Kós himself, and included a long excerpt from Kós' essay, ‘The Architecture of the Transylvanian People’. Lippich presented the young architects to the public in flattering terms: !.. they belong to the youngest generation of architects, who have justfinished or are just about tofinish their course at the Technical University of Budapest. This group of young people has assembled itself not quite by accident, but because their work shows the promise of some shared goals. Their artistic personality is in a formative stage, but they are already giving very promising and valuable signs. One of their shared characteristics is that they have been attending another school beside the official university course: that of folk art, but what they have gainedfrom it is not ethnographical descriptions buta set of highly significant principles. They have all been travelling in the country, returningfrom time to time to the Kalotaszeg region. They made sketches of houses, interiors, gate posts and grave posts, embroidered designs, but mostfrequently of all, the tower of the church in Körösfő. Its shape has become engraved in the very texture of their souls, with its four turrets, and they have been regarded it with as much piety as the Japanese artists regard their sacred Fuji’.M11908■x 97~12a 47 Portrait of Dénes Györgyi Kubinszky Mihály: Györgyi Dénes, 1974 Bácskeresztúr, Primary School, 1911-1912, drawing by Dénes Györgyi Magyar Építőművészet, 1912.1. sz. Twin studios, student competition design, 1907 drawing by Dénes Györgyi and Valér Mende Kubinszky Mihály: Györgyi Dénes, 1974
