Studio: international art (34.1905)

Studio- Talk

"road at hevisching " (See Munich Studio-Talk) by carl von coulon

BUDAPEST.—Only within the last ten native land with work in what may be characterised

years have the sculptors of Hungary as Biedermayer manner. Every public square in

succeeded in freeing themselves from Budapest bears witness to the truth of this in the

the rigid conventional style that para- monuments that have been erected to those the

lysed all originality, and it is but in the last people delight to honour, each with its conven-

half-century that plastic art has been practised tional classical group of accessory figures. For-

with any real success in the other countries of tunately, however, the rising generation is now

Europe. The energies of the Hungarian nation abandoning this hackneyed style with its unreal

have, in fact, been so entirely absorbed in the sentiment, and is substituting for it original work,

fierce political struggle that has been going on of which beauty of proportion and fineness of

so long, that there was little chance of esthetic grouping—in other words, truth to nature and

culture receiving any consideration whatever, recognition of the limitations of plastic art—are the

and literature alone was able to hold its own leading characteristics,
amidst the many conflicting interests absorbing

public attention. Plastic art had to wait for its One of the most talented members of the new

revival for more peaceful times, and when at last school is Edward Teles, who is a born sculptor,

these times came in the late 'seventies, the influence and achieved a real success with a work exhibited

of Germany, so closely associated with Hungary by him at the Paris Salon in 1900. True, he too

alike geographically and politically, was for a long studied at Vienna, but he very soon shook himself

time preponderate, coming out in everything pro- free of the influence of its traditions. His compo-

duced in the latter country. Hungarian students sitions are remarkable for the absence of unneces-

of painting and of sculpture flocked for instruction sary detail, and their thoroughly decorative effect,

to Munich or Vienna, and on their return after He is, indeed, a masterly interpreter of the human

going through the usual course, they flooded their form divine, which lends itself so admirably to

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