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

nection with one of a series of highly important and successful orders, Kaesz’s plans for a savings bank at Szarvas, more precisely in connection with his ideas for the attic and roof of the building.8

There is no evidence for such close cooperation during the early years of their friendship, but it is obvious that Kozma exerted a powerful influence on the taste and outlook of both marriage-partners. Compared to his known and acknowledged works, Gyula Kaesz’s early designs have attracted little attention so far. Understandably, after the positive response to the jubilee exhibition staged by the School of Applied Arts in 1930 and subsequently the successes achieved at the Milan Triennale in 1933, he designed more than just shop fronts and sets for exhibitions (although ephemeral, the last mentioned can be reconstructed, on the basis of photographs and press reports from the time). Orders from private persons, too, came in and he designed detached houses and summer residences, as well as furniture and fittings for a number of different homes. The respect in which he was held increased, and his designs were translated into reality. His principles and his views concerning design and education were now publicised not just in Magyar Ipaművészet (‘Hungarian Applied Arts’), but also in Tér és Forma (‘Space and Form’), an architecture journal launched in 1926 as a supplement for the newspaper Vállalkozók Lapja (The Entrepreneur’). Kaesz designed the title-page for Tér és Forma together with Farkas Molnár, who had returned from Germany.9 From 1935 until 1938, Kaesz shared the expenences he had gained creating furniture suited to the lifestyle and homes of the age in the columns of the magazine Bútor (‘Furniture’), which he edited. A few of his works from this time have entered public collections, but many survive in private hands.10 On the other hand, we know of few artefacts,

interiors and buildings from the early period of his career, although on the basis of documents we are able to follow the development of his approach to design.

Gyula Kaesz graduated from the School of Applied Arts as a pupil of the architect Dénes Györgyi.11 During the course of his studies, he had to decide a studio building. The roof, proportions and frontal elevation of the building recall the English country house generally popular at this time. In character it is strongly reminiscent of the ‘Lapis Refugii’ ‘bachelors’ house’ designed by Kozma in 1908. At the same time, the interiors and furniture of the studio house also exhibit the excessively stylised decoration found in illustrations of fairytales at this time and also present in the Baroque elements on some peasant dwellings and on manor-houses of the lesser nobility.12 The approach of

1. Design of a chandelier. Hungarian Museum of Architecture, Budapest

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