1938 was an important year in the history of Hungary’s authoritarian interwar regime. The nine hundredth anniversary of the death of King Stephen I (Saint Stephen, c. 975–1038), Hungary’s first king, was declared a Jubilee Year, and a long series of celebrations and commemorations were organised on the occasion. One of the most significant projects was the Ruin Garden in Székesfehérvár: a new memorial site set up to preserve and make accessible the ruins of the basilica Stephen had founded in the town in the early eleventh century. The garden was flanked by a mausoleum built to house a sarcophagus believed to have been the king’s. Behind the sarcophagus, elevating the sacral aura of the space, the wall was divided by a tall and imposing stained-glass window. Its maker, Lili Sztehlo (1897–1959), was the most prominent artist working in this technique in interwar Hungary.
Tag: historical memory
Recording of Tapati Guha Thakurta’s keynote lecture at the Unfinished Empire? conference
The keynote lecture at our conference Unfinished Empire? Visual Arts and Architecture in Post-Imperial Contexts, 1900–2022 was presented by Professor Tapati Guha Thakurta (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata) on 19 May 2023. A recording of the lecture is now available on our Youtube channel.
Artwork of the Month, January 2023: Monument to Milan Rastislav Štefánik by Dušan Jurkovič (1928)
The casual hiker, walking through the hills of western Slovakia, will be astonished if they walk to the top of Bradlo Hill, 543 metres above sea level, to encounter a large, terraced, stone structure, consisting of a square platform, measuring 93 by 62 metres, supporting a second platform, 45 by 32 metres, on top of which is a pyramidal form, topped by sarcophagus, with 12 metre-tall obelisks on each corner. Its monumental scale and the rusticated nature of the stonework might lead the uninformed visitor to imagine they had stumbled across some ancient temple, except for the lettering around the sarcophagus, which reads: ‘The liberated Czechoslovak nation to a great son / Czechoslovak minister and general Dr. Milan R. Štefánik, 21 July 1880 – 4 May 1919 / He perished in an aircrash on 4 May 1919 near Bratislava / With him [were] the royal Italian sergeant U[mberto] Merlino and private. G[abriel] Aggiunti’ (Veľkému synovi oslobodený národ československý / Čs. minister a generál Dr. Milan R. Štefánik + 21. júla 1880 4. mája 1919 / S ním kráľ. taliansky serg. U. Merlino a Sol. G. Aggiunti / Zahynul pádom lietadla dňa 4. mája 1919 pri Bratislave).
CRAACE at the 2022 CAA annual conference
The 110th Annual Conference of the College Art Association takes place online 16 to 19 February and 3 to 5 March 2022. CRAACE researchers will be involved in a number of sessions:
Contemporary Artists and the Contested Past – National Histories, Imperial Memories
The concluding event of our seminar series National Histories, Imperial Memories: Representing the Past in Interwar Central Europe will take place at
18.00 CET on 14 December 2021
on Zoom, featuring the artists
Szabolcs KissPál (Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Budapest)
and
Martin Piaček (Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Bratislava)
in conversation with
Edit András (Central European University, Vienna)