Folklore study (1921)

Mária Undi met Aladár Körösfői-Kriesch during her student years, whom she respected as her master. She did not settle in Gödöllő, but was a regular visitor to the artist colony; her entire life's work, her ethnographic collecting activities and her interest in applied arts are linked to the movement represented by the Gödöllő movement. 

Mariska Undi was one of the most enthusiastic collectors and processors of folk art. At the beginning of the century, until 1905, she worked in the ethnographic department of the National Museum. She also did considerable work in collecting material for Malonyai's Transylvanian folk art volumes. From 1903 she travelled the country collecting and drawing folk art objects, especially costumes and embroideries. From 1901 her works appeared in exhibitions: children's furniture, appliqué cushions, embroidered wall hangings, tablecloths. In 1906, her designs for clothes decorated with folk embroidery were published in the journal, Új Idők. She was one of the earliest to discover the folk art of the Matyó and Kalotaszeg, and to incorporate it into her own art. From 1913, Mariska was a teacher at the Industrial Drawing School, teaching decorative painting, embroidery, wood burning and design. 

Her art was imbued with the synthetic artistic spirit (the 'Gesamtkunstwerk'), that preoccupied the artists of the Gödöllő colony. the desire to create a 'Gesamtkunstwerk', a 'Gesamtkunstwerk of art'. She believed that new art should draw from the pure source of folk art. Artur Elek wrote of her that her 'art must have been nurtured in a flower garden'. She fused the decorative principles of Art Nouveau with the ornamentation of folk art. She exploited primarily the accentuated role of the outline and the decorative potential of the rhythmic repetition of uniform patches of colour to create her own distinctive motifs. 

After the dissolution of the Gödöllő workshop, Undi continued to design carpets. In 1922 she became a member of the Turán Carpet Art Workshop. In 1924, reviews of her exhibition in her own studio reported that she had set up a weaving workshop where weavers realized her designs. Her themes remained unchanged, and she continued to work on ethnographic folk life and Hungarian mythology and fairy tales. Similarly, she continued to produce watercolours and pastels depicting the architecture and costumes of the various regions. 

The emotional depth and concern of her relationship with folk art, is shown by the fact that in 1923 she wrote an article in the Magyar Kincsesláda on the crisis of folk art, and precisely on the causes of the deterioration of Matyó folk art.