Mariska Undi (Springholz)

Mariska Undi was one of six children of an army officer, who moved with his family from Győr to Budapest. She wrote in her memoirs of 1912 that her parents greatly admired beauty: “They liked, and wanted, their surroundings to be beautiful, so much so that on principle they never invited or accepted any tradesman or servant to their house who was ugly or unpleasant of face.” She graduated as an art teacher from the Országos Mintarajziskola art school, where she met Laura Kriesch, younger sister of the founder of the Gödöllő Art Colony, Aladár Körösfői Kriesch. This was definitive for her further career, as she – together with her older sisters Carla and Jolán – joined in the work of the art colony. She went as an art teacher to Szabadka (Subotica, Serbia), and after returning to Budapest took part in ethnographic collection expeditions in the Sárköz and Kalotaszeg areas. She started producing furniture designs in 1903, and exhibited a nursery at the spring interior design exhibition of the Applied Arts Association. She won a bronze medal at the St. Louis World’s Fair and and a gold medal at the Milan International Exhibition. Her furniture appeared in the exhibition of the Friends of Art Circle in 1905, and she showed the furnishings of her studio in the magazine Magyar Iparművészet in 1912. She made study visits to London, Paris, Munich and Switzerland. Many buildings, including the White Cross Children’s Hospital and the Népszálló Hotel, were adorned with her frescoes. Textile design – for carpets, tapestries, embroidery and appliqués – played a prominent part in her art. She also produced many designs for children, illustrating storybooks and textbooks and designing toys and children’s furniture. Her painting won the Pasztell Prize in 1913 and the 1,000-crown prize of the Friends of Art Circle in 1916. In the interwar period, she was mainly engaged in textile art and collection. Her book Hungarian Treasure Chest. Collection of Artistic, Original Drawing and Embroidery Patterns was published in 1943. Her furniture was influenced by Ede Toroczkai Wigand’s plank style, the forms of the Scottish designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and folk elements and decorative motifs. She died in Budapest in 1959.