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Hungarians! Go east!

On the 100th anniversary of Ödön Lechner’s death, the Museum of Applied arts, whose building was designed by Lechner himself, opened an exhibition to commemorate the architect.

Lechner was born and died in eventful historical times: three years after his birth the 1848 revolution broke out in Hungary against the Habsburgs, and two weeks after his death, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo marked the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the I World War. His career also bore on itself the marks of a new epoch: he was the one who, coming from historicism, but in a magnificent moment diverting from it, launched Hungarian architecture. His most controversial building is the Museum of Applied Arts, which now houses an exhibition to honour the master who daringly uttered the words: “Hungarian style has not existed, it will exist.”

It is difficult to assess the significance of his oeuvre, at least the study of Lechner’s works are not yet thorough and comprehensive enough to come up with a monograph. For a long time it was the dislike surrounding art nouveau that prevented this work, and later it was because his role as an initiator of a new era was too obvious. His style creating ingenuity and his role in cultural life in general, his ability to create an artistic school and his impact in his followers are still not analysed and appraised properly. However, this is not a reason for the unease that the visitors can feel when they leave the Lechner exhibition, the largest one actually for 30 years.

What one cannot see in this exhibition is that with Lechner everything changed in Hungarian architecture. As well as the style, the social role of Lechner also shifted. Instead of the engineer soldiering through days in the office, he became someone who frequented artistic circles, who was opinionated, a type of father figure, a phenomenon in the city. With this changed the relationship between him and his students: after departing from their office with Gyula Pártos, he started to see young architects as the most responsive environment for his ideas and from this an entire school developed. The members did not try to repeat the typical forms their master used, but turned to the Eastern roots, to folk art and focussed on organic spatial composition and created modern structures. In other words they paid attention to those things which were unique, original and characteristic is Hungarian architecture which until that time had been following the Western patterns. This is the part of the story that remains invisible in this exhibition, which is a modest but precise account of Lechner’s oeuvre. Besides original plans and relics of Lechner’s private life, the installation with its grey walls pushes the main work, the museum building itself, into the background. The “palace of the gypsy king” as a contemporary critic mocked the building failed to become a protagonist in this exhibition.

Lechner, the Creative Genius

Museum of Applied Arts, Budapest

20 November 2014 – 31 May 2015