Obscure(d) Modernism: The Aesthetics of the Architect Pal Ligeti

Abstract

On an old picture, taken in Budapest in the early 1930s, a little girl is leaning on the wall around the Halaszbastya or Fisherman's Bastion. From this mock fortification, built for the Hungarian Millennium celebrations of 1896, she had a marvellous view of the skyline of the Hungarian capital which was dominated by one building: the parliament (fig. 1). It is quite possible that the little girl was counting the number of white neo-gothic turrets and arches of the parliament that was, just as the fortress on which she was standing, built at the turn of the century, to express the sovereignty of the nation. Maybe she tried to decipher some of the sculptures on the walls of the parliament which represented Hungarian rulers and famous military people.