Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 22. (Budapest, 2003)

Piroska ÁCS: Géza Maróti's Series of Drawings for a Planned Head Office of the National Association of Applied Arts in Hungary

man. At first he would only participate as one of the exhibiting artists, but later on he had his share as an exhibition-designer in launching the events organised by the Association. The regular venue of Christmas exhibitions and fairs was made up of the ground-floor arcades inside the building and the high-ceilinged, glass-topped great hall. It was at the winter exhibition of 1902 that Maróti first appeared among the exhibitors, displaying his finely wrought objects of personal use and decoration. He also took part in the spring exhibition of interior design and decoration held by the Association in 1903, but now he also participated in staging the event.

2 In December of the same year, Maróti was already in full charge of the artistic design, decoration, and works supervision of the usual Christmas exhibition held by the Association. The expert organisation together with the exhibits on display went to prove the favourable and invigorating effect on the country's industrial arts of the cooperation between artisans and designers. Needless to say, Maróti excelled with his own handiwork, too. The general designer of installing the Christmas exhibition of 1904 was Aladár Lrkay. As usual, the various interiors were set up in the arcades surrounding the great hall in the middle. The sculptural ornaments and auxiliary details of the giant ornamental fount erected by Lrkay opposite the entrance were made by Maróti. Professor at a school of industrial draughtsmanship, Miklós Menyhárt was in charge of arranging the Christmas fair of 1905. Menyhárt installed 24 interiors inside the circular gallery on the ground floor, reserving the glass-topped hall for display cases to exhibit smaller objects. He threw an impressive triumphal arch across the great hall, in the middle of which was placed the famous sculptural allegory of Genius by Maróti.

3 After such beginnings it came as little surprise that Maróti was commissioned to design Hungary's applied-arts installation at the World Exhibition of 1906 in Milan. At the Pécs national exhibition of 1907, the Hungarian public was given a taste of success scored abroad. As originally envisioned by the organisers, the applied-arts objects were to have been displayed in the industrial section of the agricultural show held in the centre of South-Western Hungary. However, the National Association of Applied Arts, which had the support of the minister of religion and publiceducation, decided to have a separate pavilion built. The ground-plan, the facade and the interior design were the work of Géza Maróti. With the ground-plan he had the assistance of József Fischer and with the interior that of Béla Jánszky ( 1884-1945) to rely on. Supplementing the central space of the Palace of Arts were four completely furnished interiors and another room appointed in the style of a bazaar. Subsequently, Maróti "withdrew" from arranging exhibitions for the Association as, thanks to his participation in Milan, he received two commissions - one to design Hungary's pavilion in Venice (1909), and another to prepare designs for the interior arrangement and decoration of the Teatro Nacional in Mexico City (1908-21). In any case, the series of Christmas exhibitions was discontinued in 1912. That was because "the Museum of Applied Arts feared for its irreplaceable objects of art, which is why it refused its consent to have cubicles of inflammable materials be installed on the museum premises."

4 World War I removed the issue of the exhibitions from the agenda altogether, and under the subsequent Republic of Councils the very survival of the Association was threatened. The Arts Directorate of the extreme left government proclaimed that "... there is absolutely no need for the Association as a civic organisation, as under the present system of councils the state undertakes to carry out all the functions that the Association has discharged so far. The Association is therefore to await further notice of its dissolution and terminate publication of its magazine, Magyar Iparművészet in the meantime."

5 As a result, the Association abandoned the ongoing work of reorganising itself, limiting its activities to essential administrative jobs (i.e. the review of its archives, its collections of designs and other documents) and to compiling sample volumes from back issues of its journal.