Hungarian Folk Tales (1930-as évek)

Hajnalka Fuchs attended the College of Fine Arts between 1924 and 1929, where her teacher was János Vaszary. There she met Béla Kontuly, her future husband. In 1927 she was commissioned to design and paint the ornamental decorations of the chapel of St. Mary in the parish church of Esztergom. In 1928 she exhibited her Hungarian-style silk embroidery and furniture designs at the Kunsthalle, for which she won Lord Rothermere's Grand Prize for Applied Arts.  For the next two years she and her husband were scholarship holders at the Roman School. Kontulyné Fuchs' Hungarian-designed carpets were awarded the bronze medal at the 1933 Milan World Exhibition.  

She was one of the typical artists of the 'Roman School'. She designed important textiles and stained glass, combining stylization with modernity. Her inventive textile compositions were influenced by the applied art of Gio Ponti, combining art deco and Wiener Werkstätte. Later, from the second half of the 1930s, Mrs Kontuly's style became more detailed, often taking as its subject the world of folktales. The carpet design currently on show reads from top to bottom and tells a typical folk tale: starting with the princess whose hand the youngest of three peasant boys is fighting for. He fights the wicked witch, then the tyrannical landowner, to win his prize, the girl and the kingdom. Fuchs' work is related to the Hungarian-themed carpets of Sándor Nagy.