Boros Géza: Statue Park - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)

The main façace wall

truncated pyramid slightly tapering upwards and covered with red marble slabs, a free-standing obelisk familiar from Egyptian temples." The function of this edifice was to suggest that "posterity had no intention excessively to enlarge the leader, as the relative size of the obelisk optically reduced the proportions of the figure which, with its four-metre height, was still a giant of a statue. Its makers clearly wanted to set their work apart from the idol of the 'cult of personality’" (Tibor Wehner).

After several rounds in the competition started in 1953 and after various locations had been discarded, the commission was given to Pál Pátzay. Pátzay had designed the best-known bust of Lenin ever made in Hungary, whose copies could be found in the offices of practically every party committee. As with the bust made in 1950, here, too, the artist made the face - "expressive of Lenin’s interior features, such as his wisdom, optimism, foresight, unyielding faith, iron will and revolutionary determination" - dominate the entire figure, which radiated with reassuring calm. "It is the teacher, the educator who remained close to simple folk that my work represents. It is this fact, rather than its pro'5