Prohászka László: Equestrian Statues - Our Budapest (Budapest, 1997)
The motifs of these carved limestone pieces evoke the world of old Hungarian tales and legends. On one of them is a Hungarian warrior leading his low-set war-horse by its halter. On the second is a female figure fetching water from the well, while the third features a group of soldiers quenching their thirst. Although the motifs are taken from folk tales, there is nothing of the fancy fairy-tale about the style of the execution. The clear forms of these reliefs take their origins in the world of folk art. The artist had no intention of creating something sweetly charming. His figures are no fairytale characters, but realistic, flesh-and-blood people. It is especially the male figure leading the horse which almost bursts with energy. Both the horse, holding its head in a proud position, and its owner, a figure wearing but a loincloth around his waist, have finely sculpted, bulging muscles. It should be noted that neither the theme nor its treatment are unique to László Szomor’s work. Ferenc Med- gyessy and Géza Csorba had made several pieces in this style in the 1930s. From 1945 to the present After the devastation of World War II, several major public monuments were demolished. Some of these were recycled in the early fifties - their material was needed for the casting of a newly erected, gigantic bronze statue of Stalin. (Not only equestrian statues fell victim to this recycling campaign; the surviving sections of the Navy monument, the central figure of the Tisza monument, the statue of Viktor Rákosi, and the memorial to the 1st Infantry Regiment, to mention but the most significant, were also melted down for the same purposes.) The 1950s saw the launching of several gigantic projects. One of these was the construction of an underground railway in Budapest, a huge investment whose financing nearly crippled the budget and which therefore eventually had to be abandoned. Construction work, however, was not only carried out below the surface. Designs for the stations were prepared, and a significant portion of the building of the Népstadion (People’s Stadium) Station was actually completed. Among the sculptural ornaments 47
