At the beginning of the 20th century the Art Colony of Gödöllő was the centre of Hungarian secession and as such it was famous all over Europe. The Art Colony was established by Aladár Körösfői Kriesch who moved to Gödöllő in 1901.
He was followed by more and more artists, including Sándor Nagy, his brother-in-law, and they worked as industrial designers, painters and graphic artists.
The main concepts of the Art colony were respect of the country, love of family and traditional beliefs, and based on these, to renew art.
Their main scope was to unify art and handicraft to create an art that, feeding from the folklore, would take the role of the bourgeois art.
A central role was assigned to the weaving school established in 1904.
With the help of
Leo Belmonte
, the director of the school, local girls were soon acquiring the art of tapestry (
a special weaving technique called "gobelin"
).
From 1907 the Hungarian University of Art and Design made the school its apprentice workshop
and with the help of
Rózsa Frey
a production process was started.
All this attracted a number of artists to Gödöllő: Árpád Juhász, István Zichy, Endre Frecskay, Carla Undi, Ferenc Sidló, Jenő Remsey and Ervin Raáb are artists who moved to or rented houses in Gödöllő
.
The artistic ideal as to create the national art based on the folklore , to create a new decorative style bore the Hungarian secession . As a result of their long journeys to the villages all over Hungary, their works - stained glass windows, murals, paintings and carpets - all bear the motifs coming from Hungarian tales and legends.
After the outbreak of the first world war the Colony was evacuated and short after Körösfői Kriesch died, it was closed. Sándor Nagy and Jenő Remsey Jenő remained in Gödöllő until their death and directed the works in the weaving school which, in the meantime, was nationalized.