Prohászka László: Equestrian Statues - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1997)

In Memory of the Painter of the Path of the Sun

two, three-metre tall, original Roman columns. Supported by four thin twigs of an enormous tree with roots visible above the ground is a horse standing with its neck outstretched. In defiance of the conventional position of equestrian statues, the rider stands up, rather than sits, on the haunches of the horse. The curious, spare figure, which resembles an apostle, raises both arms towards the sky. It is as though its suppliant bony hands were reaching up to heights far above the thin uppermost twins of the tree.

Several elements of the composition allude to the work of Tivadar Csontváry Kosztka (1853-1919), a Hungarian painter of the turn of the century famous for a life full of tribulation as well as for some highly idiosyncratic art. The title itself is an allusion as Csontváry himself described his own art as “the painting of the path of the Sun”. The tree in the focus of the statue with its enormous roots and distorted, truncated, branches is an obvious allusion to one

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