Veszprémi Nóra - Jávor Anna - Advisory - Szücs György szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 2005-2007. 25/10 (MNG Budapest 2008)

STUDIES - Jenő MURÁDIN: Count Géza Teleki and the Transylvanian Connections of the Artists' House

1-2. The Teleki Mansion at Alsózsuk. Photos by Katalin Beyer M., 2006 hall were to have been decorated with frescoes. The guide describing the building at its inauguration mentions that two of these, those by Aladár Körösföi-Kriesch and Count István Zichy, were completed.

4 In January, 1913, the palace, the new seat of the Artists' House, was opened with an exhibition of nearly 300 paintings, sculptures, graphics, and applied-art works, including major pieces by notable artists. Criticism and press coverage was not lacking either; nevertheless, a vacuum of silence ensued around the affairs of the society and its new seat. The artists' club - even if the management's idea of obtaining financial coverage for costs were benevolently accepted - became a stumbling-block for the society. Baccarat players settled in at the club, huge sums lost or won changed owners. There was an irresistible craze for this type of gambling in the Hungarian capital at the time. For all police action, gambling dens could not be stamped out. There were daily reports in the press of cases of embezzlement, suicide, decent families ruined. Though faltering sometimes, Géza Teleki as the chairman of the society held on under immense pressure for a while. At the inauguration of the palace, his wife acted as hostess. Later on, however, he found the whole affair ever more burdensome and compromising. And on top of it all, the pressing debts of the society only increased. To make things even more awkward, there would never have been a chance of a new building without Count Teleki 's contribution and guarantee. "A young Hungarian magnate [...], Count Géza Teleki deserves all credit", wrote Andor Cserna in a Budapest paper, "for it was due to his generosity and propensity for noble patronage that the Artists' House could acquire the stately palace of the late Jenő Zichy in Szegfű utca."

5 The property was burdened with a huge mortgage. The management of the Artists' House owed 200,000 crowns in loans to the Municipal Union Savings Bank and a similar amount to Count Teleki. So, in trying to escape bankruptcy, the management secretly sold the building. Finally, Géza Teleki himself bought the building for 460,000 crowns so as to make up for lost dues by acquiring real estate.

6 It must have been shortly - though not immediately - after this that the eviction of the Artists' House Society and Teleki's final break with the otherwise disintegrated Society occurred. "PAINTERS' COUNT" The epithet had stuck to the Transylvanian magnate: it was used in the obituaries of the Kolozsvár (Cluj-Napoca) papers

7 at his death and at his funeral at the Teleki Crypt at Gcrnyeszeg (Gornesti). The love of art was by no means extraordinary, in fact, it was quite common in the Teleki family, which looked back to a long history. According to both the Éber-Gombosi dictionary and the article in the Thieme-Becker encyclopaedia (actually by the Hungarian art historian Károly Lyka), five members of the family were noteworthy painters or drawers, well above mere aristocratic amateurism.

8 The drawings that Blanka Teleki - imprisoned after the 1848 War of Independence - produced during her captivity are major documents in Hungarian history. Studying in Paris, Bella Teleki, a pupil of Munkácsy, made a promising start. The work of Ralph Teleki was fundamentally influenced by the Nagybánya (Baia Mare) School. For his artistic commitment, the applied artist Árpád Teleki and, for her excellent, prize-winning photos, Emma Teleki (Bella's younger sister) are also worthy of mention. Colonel Sándor Teleki, Sándor Petőfi

's pal (the poet spent his honeymoon at Teleki's Koltó [Coltäu] mansion), is remembered also for his caricatures. According to the genealogical table which József Biró drew up and the family preserved, Count Géza Teleki, whose fate was bound up with the Artists' House, was bom in Kolozsvár on February 10, 1881.

9 From a very early age, he was deeply interested in the arts; and he therefore chose to take up regular studies in this direction. He enrolled at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest, which he attended between 1899 and 1901 according to name lists.

10 Apart from the training he received there, his acquainting Budapest artist circles was particularly important for him. Later on, he would often visit the capital, and was free to enter the studios of both Arts-Hall painters and the pioneering artists of modernity of the time. He had access to them by having met painters from the Nagybánya artists' colony who exhibited in Budapest and by having had impressions in the MIÉNK and the Artists' House societies. We have little data concerning his early period as a painter. He seems to have turned to the easel and brush with full commitment and fecundity only after these major organizational activities and