Boros Géza: Statue Park - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)
The endless promenade dedicated to the ideas and events of the labour movement
■ Monument ojj the Hungarian Soviet Republic by litván Kin. '969 The objective of the tender competitions announced in 1957 for the Lenin monument as well as the one devoted to the memory of the Soviet Republic was the same: "to create,” as Nóra Aradi put it, "works both willing and able to move the masses”. István Kiss took no chances; he simply translated an emblematic work, Róbert Berény’s poster of 1919, into the language of sculpture. He supplemented the part of the half-size figure missing from the expressionist poster and enlarged the whole figure to gigantic proportions. In the words of a laudatory description by Attila Tasnádi, "the naturalistically rendered movement, the Cubist-style roughness and the robust power of the piece are brought into perfect unity to give magnificent expression to the moral strength of the period’s popular uprising and the impassioned sensations of the revolution”. The 'impassioned sensations' rendered by Berény in his poster were evoked in a somewhat more realistic manner by Dezső Kosztolányi, who spoke of an enraged sailor who "shook, with incredible energy, a flag with which he became fully united, opening his bony mouth wide enough to swallow the world”. Not much of the poster's expressive force was transferred to the statue, but it retained the single focus of the composition, which does little to enhance the effect of a sculpture in the round. The sight of the colossus dashing out from among the trees of the City Park created a rather bizarre effect. It was a monumental piece of theatrical scenery, which could never be accepted or blend into the cityscape. The remnants of the pedestal left behind after the removal of the statue serve as a spontaneous 44
