Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 16. (Budapest, 1997)

ÁCS Piroska: Lechner Ödön köztéri szobrának története

Thirty artists participated to it with a total of fourty three works.

18 According to the press, this second edition of the competition was even worse than the first. Most contestants who had taken part in the first were unable to develop their initial idea, and even thought there were some remarkably talented young artists among the new competitors, no definitive decision was taken as for who would realize the portrait of the famous architect. The works of Géza Horváth, Ottó Kalotai-Kreipel, Jenő Körmendi-Frim, László Mészáros and Viktor Vass were given special praise, and the majority of the jury expressed the wish to initiate a "third round" between Béla Farkas, Károly Cser and Miklós Ligeti. Concerning Farkas and Cser, the opinion of the journalists mostly concorded with that of the official jury. Ligeti 's work was strongly criticized,

19 the jury was even accused of lack of competence and goodwill. The most detailed report on the second round was written by Béla Lázár in Pesti Hírlap on the 11th April. He considered the work of Béla Farkas, the both precise and concize representation of a pensive figure sitting on a rock, as summarizing Lechner 's character successfully while forming with its socle an example of unified, rounded and well-balanced work. Lázár was by far not as satisfied of Cser's sculptures: out of the three, he apparently only considered two - one standing and one sitting at a drawing-table - to be worth mentionning. In the first, he criticized the disturbingly unsettled dynamics, and in the second, the unnatural pose that made the figure seem to fall onto its table. His critique of Ligeti 's maquette representing a nude youth holding the model of a building in each hand was relatively mild: he described the statics of the figure as uncertain and its symbolics as unclear, but praised the delicate relief immortalizing Lechner 's profile on the side of the pedestal.

20 His fellow critics were not as indulgent: Artúr Elek qualified as trite the tip-toeing figure fastened to its socle by a narrow veil swelling like the sail of a ship. As for the anonymous critic of Magyarország, he was appalled by the decorative buildings resembling "fancy figures on a cream cake". Latter summarized his devastating comment as follows: "It is impossible to imagine this statue erected on any of the squares of Budapest, even in full knowledge of the excesses indulged in up to this point". Lázár 's brief descriptions allow us to build an approximative image of what the works he praised must have looked like: László Mészáros, for instance, seated his figure on the top of a high column. Lajos Petri-Pick presented two projects: one was a revised version of his first model, the other represented a figure - wearing traditional Hungarian clothing - in the process of carving a wooden headboard. Viktor Vass resorted to similar symbols. Still, his semi-nude figure grasping a wooden headboard or his nude holding up a post with runic inscriptions proved to be composed somewhat carelessly, even if the delicate modelling of the figure emerging from the column was worth mentionning. Lázár also considered Jenő Körmendi-Frim

's project as superficial. The head of the architect's figure emerging from a column turned out to be somewhat too naturalistic, and created a stylistic muddle. The only thing we know about Ottó KalotaiKreipel's projects is that he presented one figure in a deeply meditative pose emanating an astonishing feeling of calm, and one standing figure creating a very immediate effect on the beholder. Géza Horváth

's somewhat clumsily sitting figure was impressive by its mas s-effect. Some projects, more original without being necessarily more successful, contrasted with the first group of works, rather unified in their presentation of the topic. Dezső Lányi, for instance, proposed a fountain, which would probably have been more appropriate on a promenade than on a square; it moreover appeared that he did not succeed in counterbalancing properly the main figure standing on the left with the group of puttos on the right side. The work of Zoltán Székessy (who was then living in Düsseldorf) was given the