Tóth Vilmos: Funeral Art - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2006)
Funeral Art in the First Half of the 20th Century
unveiled in 1933 (K 46). His work entitled Sióiéra was originally made at the same time, later to be erected over the grave of the Pewny family (K 34). A copy of his Sadnen, first presented to the public in 1931, was set up on the tomb of Aurél Bernáth (F 21/1) more than half a century later. A replica of the sepulchral monument with a figure of Christ on the tomb of Aladár Árkay (F 33/3) stands to this day in the former Árkay House. Also featuring a Christ figure is the Dingfelder tombstone, which was removed to the small lapidarium near the main entrance of Farkasrét Cemetery when the grave was cleared away. Ernő Szőts's original tombstone, a sculpture entitled Communicatiom and unveiled in 1934, was removed, in an unprecedented manner, to an exhibition from where it was never brought back to the grave (the piece has been kept in the headquarters of Hungarian Radio since 1999). From the same period of Pátzay’s career are the funeral monuments on the Bartoniek (K 35), the Lénárt (F 6/5), the Patkó (F 6/6), and the Schey (F new^) tombs, the sepulchre of József Wolf- ner in the Kozma utca Jewish Cemetery as well as two special headstones over the graves of Andor Kozma (K 47) and Sándor Pethő (K 34). Most of Pátzay's later funeral works vary the motif of the lonely female figure mourning or guarding over the memory of the deceased. Of these, the three sepulchral statues standing in the academics’ circus (F 20 circus) deserve mention — the ones commemorating Zoltán Kodály, Aladár Buzágh and Gyula Szekfű. With the allegoric figure of a woman holding the portrait of the person commemorated overhead, the piece on Buzágh's grave is an antecedent of Benedek Virág’s monument in the Tabán district. The relief placed on the Szekfű tomb in 1958 is also connected to a public monument, a design made decades earlier for a Klebelsberg Monument. The Skygazer, another well- known work by Pátzay, was placed over the grave of Judit Pinczési (F 8/3). Besides Pátzay, almost all other artists who had once been on scholarship in Rome received funeral commissions, even though few made sepulchral works comparable to those of his in significance. Of these, it is the funeral monument set up on the grave of Zoltán Gerevich, the most important sepulchral statue made by Béla Ohmann (F 33/2), designer of the Halmi (F 39/1) and the Ybl (K 35) tombs, that deserve special mention. Unveiled in 1935, the Gerevich Monument points to mediaeval prefigurations with its finely wrought Christ-corpus. Of Ohmann’s later works, a few plaques were brought to Farkasrét Cemetery, including the one adorning László Lajtha’s tombstone (F 8/3). He made the Hygieia statue, unveiled in i960, for the tomb of Mrs. Tulassay née Eszter Csorna (F 8/2). Standing out from József Ispánki’s relevant works 54
