May18.
15.00
16.00
16.00
Our exhibition presents the works of György Csete (1937–2016), one of the founding fathers of Hungarian organic architecture, and his wife, the textile artist Ildikó Csete (1940–2018), together with the works of the Pécs Youth Office from the 1970s, an architectural association led by György Csete that operated between 1970 and 1976 and was later known as the Pécs Group. The members of the group were Gyöngyvér Blazsek†, György Csete†, László Deák, Attila F. Kovács, Tibor Jankovics, István Kistelegdi†, József Nyáry†, and Péter Oltai. Csete's constant structural engineering partner was Jenő Dulánszky†.
Their architecture advocated for the restoration of the now-lost unity of nature, architecture, and man, the cessation of industrial environmental degradation and energy waste, and the use of solar energy (today known as renewable energy).
Csete derived the Hungarian organic architecture from the Hungarian Art Nouveau architecture, which emerged at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. His primary goal was to design architecture in his native language, in contrast to the technicistic desolation of international modernism, which was still prominent in the 1970s.
The exhibition opens with György Csete's world-famous Spring House (1970), a poetic architectural vision of man’s union with nature. Also on display is the first phase of the Paks Nuclear Power Plant housing estate, the so-called Tulip Houses (designed by György Csete, László Deák, István Kistelegdi, and Tibor Jankovics), which made the name of the Pécs Group nationally known through the press controversy that erupted around them and led to the dissolution of the group.
A selection of Csete's incredible series of freehand drawings, often known as ‘thinking drawings’ or ‘conceptual diagrams,’ that he made on A4 sheets of paper throughout his life are on display in the exhibition halls.
After her studies at the Hungarian College of Applied Arts, Ildikó Csete worked as a print designer at the Goldberger Textile Factory for over a decade and then continued her freelance design work for the rest of her life. Her approach was influenced by the creative spirit of the Gödöllő Artists' Colony and the Finnish applied arts of the 1970s. Through Gödöllő, she was also connected to the folk art of Kalotaszeg and, through the Finns, to European modernism. The Hungarian past and the rich, diverse world of Hungarian folk and botanical ornamentation always remained the primary focus and formal motif of her work. Her oeuvre demonstrates that there is no gap between the art of the past and the present because both are alive.
This line of thought is also the main message of our exhibition, as many of today's ecological and civilizational challenges revolve around these same issues.
curator: Miklós Sulyok
assistant curator: Dekovics Dóra
contributing partner: Csete Foundation
More information on the work of György Csete and Ildikó Csete: csetek.hu