Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 25. (Budapest, 2007)
Magda LICHNER: Early Works by Gyula Kaesz: His Designs for the Parish Church of St. Nicolas at Muraszombat /Murska Sobota
MAGDA LICHNER EARLY WORKS BY GYULA KAESZ: HIS DESIGNS FOR THE PARISH CHURCH OF ST. NICOLAS AT MURASZOMBAT* The Museum and School of Applied Arts in Budapest was an important location in the life of Gyula Kaesz (1897-1967), ‘an applied artist who built’, as he described himself. Alter attending higher elementary school in a street near to it, he studied at the School of Applied Arts for four years. He went on to teach there for more on three decades, playing an active part in the raising of the institution to academy status. Nor did he leave the location when he retired, since he then worked in a room next to the Museum’s Department of Furniture as a member of and artistic advisor to Hungary’s Applied Arts Council founded in 1954. In actual fact, he is present even today, as some of his papers are to be found in the Museum.' Following his death in 1967, his wife Kato Lukats, herself a creative artist, in many instances gave and then bequeathed documents to three institutions: the Museum of Applied Arts,2 the Archive of the Institute for Art History of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences,3 and the Archive of the Hungarian Museum of Architecture, which, in line with its remit, received rich material in the form of drawings, designs and photographs.4 The couple held not only their own works, sketches and plans, but also numerous manuscripts and drawings once belonging to the applied artist Lajos Kozma (1884-1948). The Kaesz-Koz- ma correspondence, which attests to a connection lasting three decades, in many respects informs our picture of those Hungarian architects who grew up in the period between the two World Wars, and also the story of Hungarian design, which is yet to be written. The two artists probably got to know each other in 1919, while working on the design of the May Day decorations ordered for Budapest. It is possible, however, that they first met at the School of Design, where Kaesz studied for a short while and where Kozma was an instmctor. Their friendship only became close when Gyula Kaesz married Kató Lukáts, and remained unbroken in the period of the so- called Jewish laws, a testing time, until the death of the older man in 1948. Although it seems that Kozma’s views and intellect were of a higher order, their letters, written with a teasing humour, show a connection between men who saw themselves as equals and who addressed each other on the basis of mutual respect even in the most difficult of years.5 Two letters written by Kozma to his friend in October 1941 and January 1942 respectively cast light on this period in their co-operation. The first speaks about a villa to be built in Orsó utca for Dr. József Podovszky, for whom Kaesz had designed a house in Retek utca earlier on.6 After proposals for the modification of Kaesz’s plans, the following remark by Kozma can be read in it: ‘For that matter, the whole building is huge, with its cube-like shape, its great simplicity and with those refinements which in the future, too, will be added; I believe that it will be a wholly admirable production.’7 In the second letter, Kozma gave professional advice in con* Today Murska Sobota, Slovenia 123
