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
exhibition hall divided by batches of three columns. This room was meant to accommodate domestic interiors and would have opened into the ecclesiastic exhibition mentioned above; from the central vault of the latter another staircase was to have opened (fig 6). 18 In terms of exhibition rooms, the second floor (fig. 7) 19 replicates the first, but in the space above the vestibule on the mezzanine there would have been the above-mentioned large council room and further offices. Due to the skylights here, it is on the second floor (fig. 8) 20 that the best illuminated exhibition room of the building was meant to be; the triple-vaulted apse equipped with the same feature had no more than decorative functions. Finally, a large office and the archive of collection plans were next to the octagonal hall also mentioned above. Maróti 's drawings speak of a clear, well-conceived, and at the same time impressive spatial structure. At the time he made these draughts the artist had returned, after a longer period spent on other engagements, to the interior design of the national theatre of Mexico City, and was also working on the concept of a national appliedarts centre to be set up in the same city. His plans for a head office of the National Association of Applied Arts in Hungary belong to the same conceptual domain, which is shown by the domes and decorative motifs that appear on these and the Mexican designs alike. In vain was the series of draughts made and the request submitted, the municipal council did not in effect respond; having a separate building of its own remained but an unrealisable dream for the Association. In the period of expectation, it was once again the Museum of Applied Arts that came to the rescue. Reviving traditions of the past for the time being the regular Christmas fair of old was housed in the great hall on the ground floor of the museum. Having given up on the plan of an independent building, the Association turned with another submission to the minister of culture the following year. In it, the Association requested, jointly with the Association of Fine Arts, the use of the Old Palace of Arts. As this second plea also went unheeded, the Association held its exhibition of domestic design and decoration in the spacious summer rooms of the Leopold Town Casino at Nos. 46-48 Vilma királynő útja (today's Városligeti fasor) generously offered for the purposes by its user. 21 In 1923 the society won over deputy president of the English-Hungarian Bank Simon Krausz to chair its committee of public relations. Simon Krausz donated the sum of one million korona to the funds of the Association in memory of his deceased son László Krausz, and regarded it as one of his most important tasks to secure permanent sales facilities for the Association. In the meantime, the request submitted by the Association to the minister of culture was reconsidered, and the senior government official promised to make the vacated rooms of the Old Palace of Arts available to the Association. Meanwhile, the National Association of Applied Arts in Hungary continued to fight its ongoing battle for its own headquarters without ever reaching its elusive goal. (Translated by Ákos Farkas)
