Hungarian Artists Invited to Return to China

Zoltán Kocsis (photo: Eszter Gordon)

Other big successes during the Hungarian Cultural Season in China included a performance by the Budapest Festival Orchestra, master courses by the opera singer Éva Marton and violinist Eszter Perényi, and Zoltán Kocsis's stint as guest conductor of the Shanghai Opera orchestra.

 

With the Hungarian Cultural Season in China finished, education and culture attaché at the Hungarian consulate in Shanghai Judit Hajba has been concentrating her efforts on the city's celebration of the Hungarian architect László Hudec, who designed more than a hundred buildings in Shanghai, among them the Park Hotel, the Grand Theatre and the former American Club. The latter is the venue for a recently opened exhibition of Hudec's work organised with the participation of the Hungarian Consulate General in Shanghai, the Shanghai Urban Planning Administration Bureau and the College of Architecture and Urban Planning of Tongji University. It shows original plans, models and photographs of Hudec's buildings in the city as well as letters and other documents from the Hungarian National Archives.

 

Hudec was born in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia, in 1893, when the city was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied architecture in Budapest from 1911 until 1914, then enlisted at the beginning of WWI. Hudec was captured by the Russians in 1916 and sent to a prison camp in Siberia. On his way to the camp he jumped from a train near the Chinese border and made his way to Shanghai, where he put his architectural training to work, first for an American firm, then for his own.

 

Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)