Lajos Petri (before 1928, his birth name was Lajos Pick), whose father was Márk Pick, the founder of the Pick Salami Factory in Szeged – worked as a trained and qualified sculptor (1884–1963). His mother was Katalin Weisz, the daughter of the rabbi of Lugos. In addition to Lajos (“Laci”), their marriage produced four children: Jenő, who made Szeged salami world-famous, the architect Móric, Dezső, and their only daughter, Margit. Lajos studied with the Piarists in his hometown of Szeged between 1894 and 1901. He attempted suicide as a child. After his high school diploma, he studied law in Budapest and Berlin, and then in 1907 became a student of the sculptor Ede Telcs. Later, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels and lived in Belgium from 1910 to 1922. His portraits were primarily significant. He painted his first portrait of Gyula Juhász in 1909. He has been included in collective exhibitions since 1922. His Hussar Monument, made in 1935 (Budapest, Bastion Promenade, not far from the National Archives), is one of the most successful works of classicizing monumental sculpture. After 1945, he received several state commissions for sculptures in public spaces (Glass Blower in Sajószentpéter; Portrait of Adolf Fényes in Kecskemét; Portrait of Antal Tisza in Szolnok, etc.). In 1960, he had an exhibition of his entire work at the National Salon. In 1963, the Móra Ferenc Museum in Szeged organized a memorial exhibition of his works. His characteristic portraits, which demonstrate his excellent professional skills, stand out from his work (Dezső Szabó, Zoltán Kodály, Milán Füst, etc.).
The artist, who lived and worked in Budapest since the 1920s, had his residence and studio at Aranka Street 6. This property was inherited by Mrs. László Piller, born Ilona Krist (nicknamed “Loncsi” or “Tuky”), who was the artist’s housekeeper and model for several of his sculptures. After the death of Tuky and her husband, the documents and the artist’s works came to the owner, who has kept them and kept the legacy together. The Petri document collection was offered by its owner to the Iratmentő Foundation in 2025.
The period of the documents: end of the 19th century – 1963, size: 1.66 ifm.
The owner has already partially organized the documents over time, and when we visited, we divided the documents into the following groups:
- Personal documents (of Lajos Petri and his family members, including the inventory of Lajos Petri’s estate) 0.15 ifm
- Bills of exchange, loans, bank papers (Lajos Petri)
0.05 ifm - Miscellaneous personal correspondence (including drafts of letters by Lajos Petri)
0,18 ifm - Documents related to artistic and creative activities (related to commissioned works, tenders, plans, correspondence, etc.)
0,25 ifm - Documents related to the Artists’ Union
0,02 ifm - Newspaper articles, clippings, printed materials
0,10 ifm - Documents related to the Pick factory (operational documents, property dispute between family members)
- Photos
a) family, sports and miscellaneous (also albums)
0,25 ifm (several hundred pieces)
b) photographs of public sculptures and plaster sculpture designs
0,30 ifm (also several hundred pieces)
Lajos Petri’s legacy can basically be divided into two parts: documents related to his activities as a sculptor and other, mostly private, documents.
His artistic activity is well documented, the material includes various submitted applications, as well as written and visual documentation of his plans and completed works, as well as related correspondence, based on which almost his entire career can be mapped: his studies, exhibitions, and creative successes, as well as his forced career in the 1950s and 1960s, when he produced plaster baked goods that could be placed in shop windows in order to ensure his livelihood. The request to establish a register of visual artists, initiated by the Minister of Religion and Public Education, Gr. Pál Teleki, and the detailed information provided for this, which he received in 1939, has also survived. The latter reveals other things, including that by then three of his sculptures were owned by the Museum of Fine Arts, and one – by the way, multiple award-winning – sculpture was owned by the Spanish State Museum; Several of his public works were installed in Budapest and Szeged (in the Pantheon), and he won numerous domestic and foreign awards. In addition, part of his professional legacy are some of the documents of the Free Union of Artists (and other interest-representative bodies) from the late 1940s and 1950s, of which the documents concerning the proceedings against the “leaders of reactionary artists” that affected him in 1947 may be particularly interesting.
His private papers may also be extremely interesting due to their family connections, as he belonged to the renowned Pick family. He was himself a party to the family’s property dispute regarding the Pick salami factory in the 1930s, and the thick bundles of documents related to this (among other factory accounts and invoices) can also be found in the estate. His photo collection includes numerous photographs of his ancestors and family members (including one dated 1870, which probably depicts his father, Márk Pick), but his private photos are also interesting – he dedicated an entire photo album to tennis, for example, which he himself regularly played. His personal documents include many invoices (he kept a lot of invoices, including everything from raw material orders to boiler repair invoices to telephone bill settlements), but they also include a statement made for his verification procedure, or the photographic asylum letter issued by the Swedish Red Cross that saved him from deportation. His documents also include the orphanage file on the guardianship of Count Antal Ferenc Berchtold, the child from the marriage of his sister, Margit Pick, and Count Artúr Ferenc Berchtold. The estate includes the correspondence of Lajos Petri, which, in addition to his own outgoing letter drafts, also includes letters from family members, friends, and his master, Ede Telcs.
Given that Lajos Petri (Pick) was a nationally and internationally recognized artist, and a member of a nationally known and recognized family that started the production of Pick salami, classified as a Hungaricum, and since the legacy is a collection of documents that well documents the artist’s entire oeuvre, personal fate, and family relationships, while also reflecting the situation of artists in different eras, it can definitely be considered permanent. The collection of documents was donated by the Iratmentő Alapítvány – given the artist’s work in Budapest and his national significance – to the Hungarian National Archives. Its placement is in progress.
Viktória Kovács, Tímea Karika