Fraternity-Testvériség, 1963 (40. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1963-07-01 / 7. szám
10 FRATERNITY for a thorough knowledge of the material, a secondary prerequisite for the expression of the spiritual in artistic form. The dominant factor for an artisan, Finta believed, is his knowledge of the material and his ability to shape it into form. For an artist, however, the dominant factor is the thought that he expresses in the form. Finta divided the Whitman plaque into distinctly separated parts in which he reproduced scenes from Wh itman’s poems : ‘‘Old Ireland”, “Passage to India”, “O, Captain.” Perhaps the most moving of these illustrations is the one of “0, Captain.” A limp figure is lying in the bow of a boat; an angel holds in his hand a laurel wreath symbolizing the captain’s victory over the storm and his ability to bring the vessel to safety. The wreath, however, can now be laid only upon the captain’s grave. In 1929, Finta was elected a member of the Architectural League of New York and became a regular exhibitor at the National Academy of Design. The Federal Government commissioned him to design a memorial tablet in honor of Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat, and also a statue of General Ulysses S. Grant. Finta also designed a memorial relief for the Washington Irving House in New York. Commissioned by the Health Research Bureau, he designed the memorial in the New York Health Department of Professor William Hallock Park and Dr. Anna Williams. For Saint Stephen of Hungary Church in New York he designed a statue of its patron saint, Hungary's first king. The National Academy of Medicine also commissioned him to design a bronze memorial in honor of Dr. Alfred E. Hess. Further outstanding examples of Finta’s prolific art and sculptural technique are the busts of Senator Robert Wagner, the statue of poet Imre Madach (called Hungary’s Shakespeare) in the Cleveland Public Park, and the bust of the Hungarian poet, Sándor Petőfi, located in the Cleveland Public Library. (To be continued)
