The Milan International Exhibition, 1906

The Milan International Exhibition opened in grand ceremony on 21 April, and ran until November. The two main parts, the Parco and the Piazza d'Armi, covered a total area of more than a million square metres. The Parco was to be built up with beautiful architecture, while the Piazza d’Armi was to be more functional in character. The two parts of exhibition were linked by a one-kilometre electric railway raised on a bridge-like structure at the height of an upper storey, under which traffic on the streets flowed freely. Visitors entered the Parco through the main entrance at the north corner of Sforza Castle. At a prominent position among the great applied arts halls of the Parco, the Hungarian applied arts group was assigned a site with its own front entrance, marked with the sign “Ungheria”. The organisers forged three groups into a single whole: applied arts, home industries and applied arts education. The great foyer and glass-roofed courtyard that housed the applied arts group was designed and curated by Géza Maróti (Rintel). In two applied arts halls, designed by Ödön Faragó, the applied arts education groups were curated by teachers from Budapest schools of applied arts: Róbert Nádler (National Art Education College), Lajos Gy. Mátrai (School of Applied Arts) and Miklós Menyhért (Budapest Industrial Art School). The Hungarian group was arranged according to plans by the young Budapest architect József Fischer. Entrance to Maróti’s idiosyncratic vault-like entrance hall was via a broad, open colonnade. In front of the pilastered wall between the two curved doorways formed out of sheaves of grain was a great marble-edged “duck fountain” (Kacsás kút). Mosaics by Miksa Róth were neatly arranged as if on an altar on one of the side walls: the Madonna with the child Jesus, a charming curly-haired child’s head and several decorative works. Opposite was an Eosin tile stove with a masterfully embossed copper screen and a wrought iron grate designed by Maróti and made by Forreider and Schiller. A bust of Franz Joseph by György Zala stood on the top of the stove. On a shelf above the Eosin tiles were sculptures, vases, glass and groups of flowers by Bethlen, Damkó, Holló, Ligeti, Radnai and Telcs. Along the wall stood a reduced version of Ligeti’s Anonymus, and inside the hall, Endre Thék’s elegant salon piano. Visitors passed from this foyer through three openings to the other halls of the Hungarian department, the applied arts education group on the left, a hall with four furnished rooms on the right, and a large glass-roofed courtyard in the centre. The applied arts education section comprised interiors: a music room by Géza Maróti (Rintel), the minister of culture’s study by Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch, an artists’ home designed by Sándor Nagy and István Medgyaszay, and a holiday house dining room, also by Körösfői-Kriesch. On the other side of the courtyard were Hungarian-themed garden dining furniture by Ede Toroczkai Wigand and a spacious ministerial reception room for the new palace of the minister of culture designed by Pál Horti. Coming back through the foyer of the Hungarian group and into the hall on the right, there was a symmetrical arrangement of four furnished rooms: a study by Ödön Faragó, a salon by Sándor Barta, a dining room by Miklós Menyhért (Mederl) and a study by the Thék company. Another room beside this hall featured a display of beautiful Zsolnay ornamental ware and majolica and porcelain decorated with scenes from Hungarian traditional life, made in the Angyalföld works of Emil Fischer. Opening from this was a broad, well-lit corridor housing the graphics group, with collections from the National Gallery, the Budapest municipal printers Fővárosi Házinyomda, the printers Athenaeum and Pesti könyvnyomda Rt. and other institutions, and work by the finest Hungarian graphic artists. On 3 August 1906, a fire broke out in the Italian applied arts pavilion and spread to the neighbouring Hungarian pavilion. Most of the exhibition was destroyed.

Györgyi K. 'Az iparművészet a milanói kiállításon' in: Magyar Iparművészet 1906/4-5. szám, 161-219.

see also

s. au. 'A milanói magyar iparművészeti csoportnak újjászületése' in: Magyar Iparművészet 1906/6. szám, 282. 

s. au. 'A milánói kiállítás kitüntetettjei' in: Magyar Iparművészet 1906/6. szám, 283; 285-196.

s. au. 'A milánói kiállítás 10.000 lírás királydíja' in: Magyar Iparművészet 1906/6. szám, 283; 285-196.

s. au. 'A milánói magyar kiállítás dícsérete' in: Magyar Iparművészet 1906/6. szám, 283-284; 285-196.

s. au. 'A milánói kiállítás érme' in: Magyar Iparművészet 1906/6. szám, 284; 285-196.

s. au. 'Külföldi lapok véleményei a milánói világkiállítás magyar iparművészeti osztályáról' in: Magyar Iparművészet 1906/4-5. szám, 220-225.

by Jessica Fehérvári