An exhibition of paintings by Dénes Gulyás

• 06. March 2001. - 20. April 2001.

PARLIAMENT

I have memories of the Hungarian Parliament dating back to my childhood in the early 1930s. The building is vast yet delicate, with a fairy-tale quality, its mass of lacy towers and its dome reaching for the sky. Its reflection in the Danube shimmers with the ripples on the river. Later, I saw it after the siege of Budapest in 1944, its dome caved in, and later, as if resting on the pillars of the temporary Kossuth Bridge. There were times in my life when weeks and months went by without my seeing it, and there was a period when my son and I worked inside it, doing restoration. For forty years, I could see from my studio window how the dome and onion towers of Parliament rose about the rooftops.

Ever since it was designed in the 1880s, Parliament has been a controversial building, like the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Originally, Imre Steindl, the architect, presented a Renaissance palace, but the statesman Count Gyula Andrássy, head of the design committee, waved a picture of the Houses of Parliament in London and persuaded Steindl to approach it again in Gothic style. The result, built on piles of Carpathian deal driven 20 metres into the ground, stands 260 metres long on the Pest embankment of the Danube, between Margaret Bridge and the Chain Bridge, striking a magical balance with the buildings of Buda Castle on the opposite side.

Steindl's building is full of architectural absurdities. There is a 35-metre void between the inner and outer skins of the dome. Was there such a thing as a Gothic dome anyway, and if so, when? The main staircase, said the building's envious critics, is functionless, the corridors as wide as a shopping mall... Yet today, Parliament has grown into a symbol of Budapest. It preserves in its entirety and in every detail the careful efforts of an architect who watched how his composition was executed, from the big features down to the last nail. Sculpture, stained-glass windows, furniture-everything fits like a glove.
That is how this series of pictures emerged and developed, from my memories and experiences.