Lechner Ödön rajzai a szegedi városházához

Abstract

The paper is about the set of drawings and documents by Ödön Lechner and Gyula Pártos for the Town-hall of Szeged dated to 1881–1883 (Hungarian National Archives, Csongrád-Csanád County Archives, Szeged [MNL CSML], Collection of Building Plans and Documents of the Municipality of Szeged, marked Lecher Ödön, Pártos Gyula: A Szegedi Városházhoz készített tervek, rajzok és iratok, [Plans, drawings and documents for the Szeged Town-hall], XV.2b. 45. d.-49.d). The elaborated theme includes ground-plans, rosette, baluster and skylight plans, detail plans of staircase and main cornice, plan of the roof of the main staircase, 37 drawings of ornamental sculpture, window pillars, window frames and rail chains, painter’s stencils signed by Ödön Lechner, two façade versions, tower detail, details of the main portal, drawings of the vault around the clock, of the ornaments of room doors and cornice elements. The building logbooks, list of submissions to the competition with code-names and the contracts signed with the building contractors are also valuable sources.In addition to eighty drawings of diverse sizes and techniques, the collection includes the construction documents, accounts, correspondence, building logbooks, planning competition calls, and a colour plan for the tiling of the Szeged Town-hall now in the Architectural Collection of the Kiscelli Museum of the Budapest History Museum (inv.no. 117). I evaluate the drawings both within the conception of an architectural work and also as separate graphic sheets, and try to describe their background in terms of the history of architecture, art and ideas.I am led to conclude that the Szeged Town-hall was the first project to manifest Lechner’s ambition to lay the groundworks of a national architecture based on the more abstracted and universal basic forms of folk art but keeping abreast of European tendencies. The drawings are invaluable in that they add more information to the chronology of Lechner’s artistic career and lend stress to the fact that folklore and local history researches, the intellectual approach, the synthesis of local and international achievements, a thorough knowledge of the history of ceramics, the redefinition of traditions played at least as important roles in creating the concept of a building as individual intention and creative imagination.The paper was supported by the Ernő Kállai Art Historical Research Grant.