Tóth Vilmos: Funeral Art - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2006)

Funeral Art in the Second Half of the 20th Century

figure of dramatic effect made for the tomb of Csaba Ivánka was carved by Ágoston Pusztai (F 20/2). The grotesque animal figures on Tamás Péli’s tomb were sculpted by László Gyula Perger (K 42/1). Standing over László Bánkuti’s grave in Rákoskeresztúr Cemetery is István Bánkuti’s Our Father, a monumental statue made in 2000. Mihály Mészáros’s Phoenix was erected as a communal site of remembrance at the main entrance of Farkasrét Cemetery in 1989. Despite the fact that its fusion of pagan and Christian symbolism was originally a rarity, the artistic value of this piece has been somewhat diminished since its imitations were set up in the cemeteries of Rákoskeresztúr and Óbuda.

Belonging to the group of non-figurative and ornamental monuments are the tombs of the Munkácsy family by Frigyes Matzon (F 11/5), of Mária Modok and Béla Czóbel by Aladár Farkas (F 1/4), of Tamás Major by András Beck (K 42/1), or the Tátrai (F 35), and Farkas (K 42/1) monuments by István Ká- konyi and István Marosits respectively. Made by Tamás Ortutay in 1980 was Gyula Ortutay's funeral monument consisting of a genuine mill-stone complemented in its axis with an infinite line and of another, smaller, headstone (K 34/2). Also designed by Ortutay, in 1981, was the tombstone of Imre Sar- kadi, featuring a broken piece of basalt and a purple beech growing out of the fissure (K 34/2). A Budapest work of Sándor Rétfalvi, who has made several fine funeral monuments for the cemetery of Pécs, is the tomb of János Pilinszky (F 22). Róbert Csíkszentmihályi created the Barcsay (K 34/2), the Kol- lányí (F 36/2), and the Végh (F 21/2) tombs. The funeral monuments of Mrs. János Vasilescu (F 22) and Lajos Németh (F 1) were made by Pál Deim.

The tomb of Gyula Illyés (F 46/7) was made by Ádám Farkas in 2003, and so was that of Sir Georg Solti, in 1998; the sculpture on the latter depicts the arc drawn in the air by the conductor's wand (F 60/1). A peculiar work with an interpretative field unusually broad for the genre is László Kálnoky's tomb by János Sugár (F 21/1). A tree trunk with its roots reaching skyward was designed by László Péterfy for the tomb of András Erdei (F 31). A similar device was used by Klára H. Nándori, who put the fossilised remains of an archaic tree on the Erdei Monument (F 25). What distinguishes Balázs Almási’s 2001 work, Count István Bethlen’s symbolic sepulchre, is its heavy reliance on landscape design (K12/2). Designed by János Bíró, Miklós Szabolcsi’s tomb can be found in the Farkasrét Jewish Cemetery. Further noteworthy works unveiled in recent years include the tomb of Tibor Csiky by Tibor Budahelyi (F new8), of Agnes Nemes Nagy by György Jovánovics (F 31), of Csaba Rékassy by Endre Szőnyi (F 31), of Kálmán Lajta by Gábor Fieritesz (F 31), of András Kiss Nagy by Mária Lugossy

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