Öriné Nagy Cecília (szerk.): A gödöllői szőnyeg 100 éve - Tanulmányok a 20. századi magyar textilművészet történetéhez (Gödöllő, 2009)

Summaries

126 album of graphics entitled In Ancient Times of Yore, the elements related to the Hun origin are combined with the motifs he found when he observed the life, architecture and types of furniture of contemporary Transylvanian village people. Similar pictures appear in the stain glass windows of the mirror hall of the Culture Palace of Marosvásárhely. There are a number of recurring subjects in his works such as, for example, the grave-post of dame Réka. In his compositions of this type, he always depicted an existing grave post which is the case with the one we can see on the grave of Attilas first wife. The grave-post originally stood in Kalotaszeg, in the cemetery of Magyarvalkó and its drawing can also be found in the first volume of The Art of the Hungarian People. The truest to life among the wooden grave-post representations woven into carpets is the work of Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch designed in the last year of World War I, in 1918, entitled Eagles over the Hero's Grave. The carpet symbolizes the tragic doom of Hungary and especially that of Transylvania; besides, it commemorates the Hungarian soldiers killed in action. The main motif of the carpet is a grave-post adorned with three boughs. The custom of sticking a green three-bough branch on top of the grave-post plaited with flowers can only be found in Kalotaszeg within Hungarian speech area. Ihe branch was carried in the head of the funeral procession or in front of the coffin. The remaining parts of the carpet show, on both sides of the main motif, all the grave posts of the cemetery. Some of these can be found in the first volume of Dezső Malonyay's The Art of the Hungarian People; based on this, it is easy to identify the settlements, e.g. Magyarbikal, Magyarókereke and Zsobok, wherefrom the original grave posts came. A grave token almost identical with the one used for the main motif is shown on one of the coloured pictures of Malonyay's volume, but in that case, the designation of the settlement is missing, for the inscription of the picture is only cemetery of Kalotaszeg. All the colours of the carpet evoke a late autumn or winter mood. The decoration on the three-boughs is evidence to this; they tied bird feathers to the boughs only in winter when no fresh flowers were available for decoration. The wooden grave posts to be found in the works of Sándor Nagy mostly resemble the plated ones prepared in SouthTransdanubia more particularly in Baranya County. In the background of his drawing entitled In memóriám Aladár Körösfói Kriesch, a church with a small graveyard around it is shown, in which the grave tokens are evidently from Baranya County. Many of them can be identified in Volume IV of Dezső Malonyay's The Art of the Hungarian People. The same goes for his creation entitled Allegory in memóriám György Ráth prepared in 1905. Nearly all the nine grave posts dissolving into the background can precisely be identified in the above-mentioned volume. Ihe works of János Arany were a source of inspiration for Sándor Nagy. He evoked the figure of the invincible warrior in his carpet entitled Toldi. The form of double picture was widespread in art nouveau and it appears also in this carpet. In the upper section, the figure of Toldi is shown outside the village farm house surrounded by flowers as he defeats the wolves attacking him. In the section below the wooden grave-post, the hero appears amongst stylised flowers. In contrast to the grave-posts mentioned earlier, the tomb is the product of Sándor Nagy's imagination, but when creating the grave token, the artist drew on his great experience he had with grave-posts. Therefore, each of his motifs can be spotted somewhere in the rich grave-post culture of the Hungarian speech area. The horned deer as a legendary element simplified to a bare symbol held an important role in Hungarian applied arts. So, the work of Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch entitled Deer, which he created in 1913, was also inspired by the legend of the magic deer. In the central area of the carpet, there are two heeding deer throwing back their heads. We can see two grave posts behind them and the moon with star above them in the sky. This composition is also fictitious for, the grave posts of the Deer as they are, are completely alien to the Hungarian traditional culture of grave-posts. Finally, we can draw the conclusion that the creators of the Gödöllő artists' Colony were familiar with many types of the Hungarian wooden grave-posts and they widely used them. These grave tokens appear now in their original environment, now deprived from it, in the artists' compositions. It seldom occurs that the grave-posts in the work of art cannot be associated with a settlement or with a geographical region. Zsuzsanna Benkö The threads of tradition - Carpets presented in the exhibitions of the Cennini Society and of the Guild Members The artists' colony of Gödöllő and the work of its creators have influenced in many different ways the subsequent generations. Of course, their art of an extraordinarily rich inspiration striving to attain the all art synthesising character had the strongest influence on those artists who were in direct contact with them. The disciples of Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch, though not entirely adopting their master's teachings, remained faithful to him either in theoretical approach or in the mode of their expression. Several artist societies have been formed on the basis of the principles held in common. The study is about 2 groups: the Guild