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

Funeral Art in the Second Half of the 20th Century

one is the black granite figure on Bartók's monument erected on the occasion of his reburial in his native Hungary’s soil in 1988 (F 60/1). The first, limestone, version of the work connecting the musical symbols of a bird and a lute had been erected in a public space of Győr as Bartók's monument in the provincial town. Placed on the tomb of József Berda was Borsos’s work known as Phoenix (or Firebird) in 1967 (F 33/4), while his other bird-figure called Seagull evoking a poem by the dead poet marks the grave of Zoltán Zelk (F 22).

One of Borsos's finest works, the Sungazer is another replica used as a funeral sculpture, this one marking the burial place of Gábor Ubrizsy (F 6/1); the piece employs a view of Lake Balaton, another leitmotiv of the Borsos universe. Two more of his works set up in Farkasrét draw on Greek mythology for their motifs. Of these, the copper relief representing Orpheus and Eury- dice was set up on Baron Károly Hatvany’s tomb, but the piece was destroyed within a year of its being erected, during the siege of Budapest in World War 11. The other funeral monument employing a mythological allusion, the figure of Apollo in this case, was erected much later, when it was set up on János Ferencsik’s tomb in 1987 (F 25). Right next to it stands another work by Borsos, the sepulchral sculpture erected on the tomb of Mária Gyurkovics in 1976, eternalising the singer in her celebrated role as Gilda in Rigoletto (F 25).

Mention should be made of the relief Sorrow on the Kéry tomb (F 5/3), the monument over Géza Petényi's grave (F 49 circus), and the relief entitled Dawn, which was made in 1981 and later placed on Borsos's own tomb (F 20/2). Miklós Borsos sculpted the piece now marking the burial place of Ignác Semmelweis, but the work called Mother with her Children was not originally made as a funeral monument in 1963. The ashes of Semmelweis were laid to rest behind it two years later, when they were placed in a wall of his birthplace, the Tabán building which now houses the Semmelweis Museum of Medical History. (The above-mentioned Semmelweis sarcophagus unveiled in 1894 can be found in Kerepesi út Cemetery to this day.) Borsos’s outstanding work as a sculptor is another indication of the fact that Farkasrét Cemetery emerged as the foremost site of Budapest's funereal art in the second half of the twentieth century.

Two major works by Amerigo Tot can be found in the cemeteries of Budapest. Although originally meant for his native village, a replica of his Ciurgó Madonna now stands upon the tomb of Mrs. Bozzai née Gyöngyi Benedetti (F 46/3). A variation on The Apotheoóíi oft the Seed, a work originally exhibited in 1971, was set up on the Eck Monument (K 42/1). Of the works made by Miklós Melocco, the first version of the sculpture entitled Homo Faber marks

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