Tóth Vilmos: Funeral Art - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2006)

Kerepesi út Cemetery at the Turn of the 20th Century

It was in the same period that the funeral sculpture of Ede Teles came to fruition. The first, and most important, product of.Teles's relevant artistic activity was the finely-wrought bust he made of Miklós Barabás, unveiled in 1905 (K 28). He made another sculptural portrait in 1910, then for the tomb of Pál Horti (K 17/3), a monument whose architecture and tulip-patterned mosaic were made by Géza Maróti. Both the Barabás and the Horti sepulchres are among the most important representatives of the funeral genre. Also in 1910 was András Mechwart’s sepulchre completed; here the architectural designer was Ignác Alpár (K wall). Teless later works, such as the tombs of Leó Lánczy (K 19/1), Jenő Hubay (K 25/1) or Antal Hekler (K 41/1), are less well-balanced, but much more monumental pieces than the Barabás statue. With its ungainly proportions and unimaginative design, the sepulchral statue of the painter Mihály Munkácsy is in startling contrast with the rest of Teles’s oeuvre (K 33-34). Ede Teless tomb in Farkasrét Cemetery is topped with a work of his own, too (F19/1), and it is also in Buda that his finest work, the Somorjai sepulchre, can be found (F 1/4). He made unique works for the two Jewish sites of interment in Pest; still-lives suggesting the symbolism of the vanitai motif, where the group of objects represented stands for the life-work of the decedent. Such a piece can be found on Lipót Vadász’s tomb in the Salgótarjáni utca Cemetery and on the Haar and the Marczali sepulchres in the Kozma utca Cemetery. There are examples of figurái representation in both Jewish cemeteries - more in Kozma utca than in Salgótarjáni utca - but very few similar instances can be seen of such a harmonious and refined reconciliation of the traditional ban on pictorial images with the artist’s representational urge.

György Rath’s tombstone is Géza Maróti’s outstanding work, its effect largely due to the contrast between the monumental mass of the piece and the ethereal lightness of its fine details (K10/1). The nudes holding a wreath are allegories of the arts of which the decedent was a patron: sculpture, painting and architecture. Above Maróti's own tomb stands his large marble relief known as the Muiic of) the Sphered; the first version of the work appeared in 1908 on blueprints made for the Hungarian pavilion in Venice (K 32). It was also from his workshop that the statue of God the Father for the main entrance of Rákoskeresztúr Cemetery was made around 1904. His last funeral piece, the tombstone of Vilmos Vázsonyi, features eagles with wings spread, and stands opposite the entrance to the Salgótarjáni utca Jewish Cemetery, where it was unveiled in 1927.

Built between 1904 and 1908, the dual arcades of tombs are among the greatest architectural and sculptural assets of Kerepesi út Cemetery, together

2 9