Veszprémi Nóra - Jávor Anna - Advisory - Szücs György szerk.: A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria Évkönyve 2005-2007. 25/10 (MNG Budapest 2008)

STUDIES - Jenő MURÁDIN: Count Géza Teleki and the Transylvanian Connections of the Artists' House

5. Géza Teleki's elder daughter, Kató, on horseback in the mansion garden. By courtesy of Michael Dickinson. ticism of the life of this art-loving aristocrat; were we not to know the distinction he gained by the competent and self-sacrificing support he afforded to the establishment of the Budapest Artists' House and the then revolutionary art movements in the pre-war days; and were we not aware that the over seventy works filling the two exhibition rooms are by a painter who had been the owner of thousands of acres of land before the land reform, and who had made his sacrifices for supporting painting out of noble passion with the wealthiest of means behind him, and who now, as hardships have befallen all, seeks, without any pose of despair, bread instead of luxurious flirtation from his muse, we would even then sense from his themes, from the direction of his sensibility, the style of his paintings that we face a man for whom art has always been, whether as a lover or creator of art, an innermost, spiritual cause."

39 Withdrawal and solitude at Alsózsuk favoured calm labours. From the 1920s, Teleki sent his newly-made pictures to exhibitions in Transylvania. He thus displayed his paintings entitled Snow Melting and Head Study at the 1921 Collegium Artificum Transsylvanicorum show exhibiting the work of artists from all round Transylvania.

40 At the 1930 show, his only one-man exhibition, he presented oils, watercolours and drawings. The appreciative article presently cited mentions a few of them by their titles: Merry-Making Lads, Lumber Thief, Noon, Summer Cottage, and a sketch for a symbolic piece called Life.

4] It is characteristic of the East-European looting of mansions and castles, the scattering of artworks and paintings in the wake of World War II that only one or two of Teleki's paintings have turned up, owned by family members living in the West. It is thus impossible to tell what kind of pictorial attitude and manner he worked with, how far he had been influenced by the moderns of the turn of the century he had been passionately fond of. (The excellent art historian József Biró, who also visited the Alsózsuk mansion, offered some highly appreciative comments on his works.)

42 His figure is preserved in a handful of photos - usually family group shots where his features are identifiable. In one, he and his elder brother, Domokos, born in 1880 (both wearing elegant suits and boaters) are in the company of the Bánffy daughters. The Erdélyi Lapok, the magazine of the Transylvanian Literary Society, published an article on the Artists' House exhibition illustrated by portrait photos of Count Géza Teleki, Béla Iványi Grünwald, Miklós Rózsa and Elemér Kónyay.

43 From semi-profile, Teleki looks into the camera with his obligatory pipe in his mouth. His gait is calm, a man of poise, his high forehead a characteristic feature of his family. In his last years, he hardly left his home. His early death surprised even those who had known him. He was not 58 when death overtook him on October 29, 1937. (Art encyclopaedias do not bother to mention the date of his death.) His nephew already mentioned recollected his funeral: "A four-oxen cart brought him up here (to the Teleki crypt on the Gemyeszeg hill), with black cloths on their horns..."

44 The family history can be eked out with a few details. The younger daughter of Géza Teleki and Margit Béldi, Ella Teleki, was born in Budapest in 1918. She married John Dickinson, the Eastern European organizer of the British secret service (she died in Baden-Baden in 2004). Their only son, John Michael Dickinson (b. 1943) lives in Luxembourg. It is photos from him (the grandchild fluent in Hungarian), Kálmán Teleki (in Brussels) and Júlia Teleki (in Bavaria) that help invoke the family atmosphere at the turn of the century. NOTES * The Hungarian acronym stands for Magyar Impresszionisták és Naturalisták Köre (i.e. Circle of Hungarian Impressionists and Naturalists), and means: "OURS"-the trans. 1 Németh, Lajos ed. Magyar művészet 1890-1919. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1981, p. 131; Zwickl, András. "The Artists' House (1909-1914)." In: Németh, Zsófia ed. Artists 'Studios and Exhibition Spaces {Public Spaces of Modern Architecture in Budapest 2). Budapest: Emst Múzeum, 2003, pp. 210-217. [KUT stands for Képzőművészek Új Társasága (i.e. The New Society of Artists), and associates "FOUNTAIN" - the trans.]. 2 Rózsa, Miklós. "A Müvészház története." In: Kalauz a Művészház palotafelavató kiállítására. Budapest: Müvészház, 1913, p. 9. 3 -y -r. [Kónyay, Elemér], "A Művészház palotája." In: op. cit., p. 19. 4 Ibid., p. 18. 5 Csema, Andor. "Az új Müvészház." In: Egyetértés, January 23, 1913, p. 10. 6 "A Művészház csőd előtt." In: Esti Újság, May 10, 1914, pp. 5-6. The refurnished building now rooms the Czech Embassy and cultural institute. 7 "A 'festők grófja'". In: Keleti Újság, November 3, 1937. p. 7.