“The life and work of the Zsolnayaks show how talent, diligence, ingenuity, perseverance, commitment to quality, responsibility for the community and family cooperation bring a manufactory employing a few people to a world-class, livelihood for nearly a thousand people into an insurance company at the forefront of innovation”, we can read in Krisztina Csalló and Csaba Pap’s The Collector’s House in his Zsolnay album, reminding the reader of an ideal world. Apropos of the album published by the ResoArt Foundation, more than sixty new Zsolnay works have been added to the collection of about a thousand pieces of the art collector András Szabó, in the ResoArt Villa – the former villa of the architect Albert Kálmán Kőrössy – so that 550 objects can be viewed. The album not only deals with the history of Zsolnayak, the collection, and the art nouveau villa on the edge of Városliget, the entrepreneur András Szabó also tells the story of how he acquired a fortune and became an art collector in the volume containing around 150 illustrations. Not incidentally: Thanks to the art collector Magdolna Költő – who created a József Egry collection of about a hundred pieces – many fine paintings are also on display, including works by József Rippl-Rónai, Vilmos Perlrott-Csaba, artists of the Nagybánya painting school, in addition to Egry.
The villa will welcome visitors from the fall of 2023, and in the past year and a half, it will be presented on guided tours from the outside and inside. (The maximum number of participants in guided tours is fifteen, and the number of visitors in the past year and a half was around four thousand.) The facade of the villa has also been renovated. – In the summer of 2024, we beautified the villa for the third time so that it deserves the title of Budapest’s art nouveau jewel, since the rich ornamentation that we see on the building, the plaster stucco, and the weather conditions are difficult to tolerate. Not only the decorations around the windows have been renewed, but also the pediment showing the triple allegory of art, on which one figure from painting, sculpture and architecture can be seen – Krisztina Csalló, president of the ResoArt Foundation’s board of trustees, said at the press tour of the exhibition yesterday.
In connection with a new composition, Endre Thék’s Art Nouveau sideboard, Csaba Pap, a member of the foundation’s board of trustees, recalled that Thék, who introduced large-scale and high-quality furniture production in Hungary, worked as a carpenter’s maid in Békéscsaba when he was young, where Mihály Munkácsy became his close friend. – That certain Mihály Munkácsy, who later became a painter prince, and whose one of the most complete exhibitions can still be viewed at the Museum of Fine Arts. Endre Thék also studied in Paris – where he was able to meet Munkácsy again – the Parisian influence is also visible in his beautiful work. And speaking of Paris: the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris was one of the greatest successes of the Zsolnay factory. Of the works of applied art that were presented in Paris, the Museum of Applied Arts exhibited here. Based on the press coverage of the time, the Zsolnay ceramics were the most sought-after, with the longest queues. A police escort, cordons and barricades are needed to prevent a mass invasion of the Museum of Applied Arts. We partly experienced this kind of feeling a year and a half ago during our opening, then there was such mass interest that it was extremely difficult to serve, but it was a great joy for them, said Csaba Pap.
As for the new compositions: visitors can meet the latest rarities in the room presenting the Art Nouveau period. The bowl by Henrik Dařilek is a rarely found art nouveau piece, on which the subject, the male figure standing in nature, is highlighted by contour lines imitating the technique of making stained glass. The display case showing the works of Lajos Mack has been expanded with several new art objects, such as the vase decorated with a couple in love or the light fixture depicting a mermaid emerging from the foam. Júlia Zsolnay’s talent is praised by the dated and signed vase, on which the artist already depicts floral motifs running around the body of the vase in the spirit of Art Nouveau. László Mattyasovszky-Zsolnay, who belongs to the third generation of the Zsolnay family and was also known as a painter, made the vase decorated with bird skulls in memory of his grandfather, the founder of the factory.
Géza Nikelszky – in addition to his work in the Szent István hall – immortalized his name in the art history of the factory with his modern Hungarian designs, his folk art nouveau works represent a special spot of color among the art nouveau objects mostly covered with metallic shiny eosin glazes. The masterpiece of symbolism, La Luna (The Moon), which came from the United States and took its rightful place in the display case showing the designs of Sándor Abt Abt, is also a representation of the Roman moon goddess of death and rebirth, fertility and creation, and at the same time the idea of the Art Nouveau concept of femininity . As it was said during the press tour: there was a big bidding war for the art object with a well-known Zsolnay collector, and the foundation finally got it for an amount equivalent to about twenty million forints. There are, of course, more expensive Zsolnay ceramics on the art market: for example, the 1907 Elephant-headed vase with an exotic landscape image (also in the Art Nouveau room), which you can get for about twenty-eight million forints – if you can afford it.
The rooms showing the period from the 1870s to the mid-1890s have also been expanded with many new features. These include a heart-shaped bowl painted with birds sitting on a tree branch, a vase decorated with special peacock motifs, Kaldeway Kelemen’s bowl depicting a hunting scene or the openwork caspo decorated with plastic flowers belonging to the Rococo series.
The expansion of the collection is connected to a new exhibition management. On the guided walk called The Collector’s House, in addition to getting to know the top achievements of industrial art, interesting things are also discussed, including how the decorative ceramics designed by Júlia and Terézia Zsolnay in the 1870s reflect the eternal debate of Hungarian political and cultural history about the fact that the Hungarian people are from the East or is it western. New is the Wine, Drunkenness, Art Nouveau program, which presents the place occupied by the ResoArt Villa in Hungarian Art Nouveau – combined with shaving. Also a new color on the villa’s palette is the program entitled Recipes for Success, which focuses on the “parallel biography” of the Zsolnay and Szamos families.
Source: nepszava.hu
