Wooden Towers - Fortified Churches

The works displayed here explore Hungarian Reformed, Catholic, Unitarian, Greek Catholic, and Orthodox churches and bell towers from multi-ethnic, multi-denominational Transylvania, with emphasis on locations that are significant from the standpoint of Hungarian architectural history.

Using the instruments of both photographic and artistic documentation, the watercolours, pen and pencil drawings, and indoor and outdoor photographs show not only sacred buildings, but also the communities that used them and the furnishings and other objects that adorned their interiors.

Most of the works in question emerged from the activity of art teachers, as it was this profession that produced the majority of collectors and analysts working in ethnography and historic preservation during the second half of the 19th century. The remainder were produced by graphic artists and painters, a second profession that frequently concerned itself with the preservation of Hungarian cultural assets. The artists in question drew on numerous intellectual trends. The demand for the development of a characteristically Hungarian architectural style arising in the early 20th century gave birth to a movement in which artists and architects spotlighted various features of peasant architecture and incorporated them into their work. The foundations of this style were to be found in the folk architecture of Translyvania, with architect Károly Kós, who drew both form and content from folk culture, with particular reference to local/national character, playing a significant role in the process. Transylvanian folk architecture influenced not only Kós's art, but the architectural artistry of the Hungarian secession movement, as well.

Fine artists and architects alike made study trips to Transylvania, where they became acquainted with the universe of Translyvanian folk attire, customs, architecture, and art. Several such painters and art instructors were to participate in the illustration of Dezső Malonyay's multivolume work, Art of the Hungarian People, published between 1907 and 1922.

The works included in this exhibition guide the viewer through various regions of Transylvania, offering examples of the wooden churches of Kalotaszeg, the Mezőség, and the Szilágyság, the castle-churches of Székelyföld, and the fortified churches of Szászföld, demonstrating the defensive function these 16th and 17th-century structures served. The exhibition also shows how 18th-century wooden churches were constructed from homes, while including several elements of the major stylistic periods ? soaring Gothic steeples and porches typical of the Renaissance period ? in their structures, as well. Also demonstrated are the similarities between the methods applied to sacred architecture by Romanian and Hungarian village carpenters where the two populations lived side-by-side. In fact, research into wooden churches uncovered material of interest to the history of science, revealing how even prior to World War One, Hungarian and Romanian historic preservation efforts attempted to document and/or purchase churches slated for demolition. While the documentation of churches and sacred buildings commenced with scholarly research in the fields of historic preservation and folk architecture, several major public exhibitions, too, played a major role in its development. During the preparatory work for what was known as the ?ethnographic village" exhibition of the Hungarian Millennial Exposition (1896), organisers had various churches photographed and sketched, and various designs drawn up, in order to select the best possible plan for the exhibition's centrepiece. In the end, a walled-in church fashioned after the example of the Hungarian Reformed (Calvinist) churches of Kalotaszeg, was constructed on the village's main square. The structure featured a steeple with a balcony and four pinnacles, and a protecting wall harbouring small rooms used as booths for the sale of folk art and handicrafts, as well as for smaller exhibitions.

Art instructor József Huszka considered such churches important subjects for research, not only for their frescoes of Saint Ladislas, but also for the ?ancient Hungarian" motifs to be found on the sacred frescoes and textiles they housed. Huszka visited Roman Catholic, Hungarian Reformed (Calvinist), Unitarian, and Greek Orthodox churches, monasteries, and chapels in order to document the oldest materials he could find.

Another art instructor whose architectural research extended to the wooden churches of Transylvania was Gábor Szinte, who produced drawings and photographs of structures located primarily in the Mezőség, Kalotaszeg, and Székelyföld. Árpád Telegdy and Ferenc Bokros, too, focused on the documentation of Kalotaszeg churches with wooden steeples and bell towers. On a tour that began in Brassó (Brasov), the centre of the Barcaság, architect, sketch artist, and war correspondent József Makoldy, a student of Károly Kós who performed surveys for the National Committee of Public Monuments, created a number of interesting studies, including a 1912 series of drawings of Székelyföld castle-churches and monuments and Szászföld fortified churches. Illés Aladár Edvi and Vince Hende, whose works were typically artistic depictions of rural folk costumes and folk architecture blended into its natural surroundings, both came into contact with Kalotaszeg via the Gödöllő art school. Contemporary letters and documents demonstrate that the Ethnography Department of the Hungarian National Museum supported such documentary-type field work, which is the reason that the majority of the images in this exhibition eventually came to reside with the Museum of Ethnography. The works of art on display here are a testimony to the important cultural-historical work using the tools of scholarly documentation (art, photography, and prose) done by these men. It is to their credit that photographs and artistic renditions of these since remodelled or demolished churches and bell towers and lost ecclesiastical furnishings have remained to posterity.