May 1, 1930
For the short space of two weeks there will be on view at the Brooklyn Museum in the rotunda a marble bust of the Hungarian poets Sandor Petöfi, done by the Hungarian sculptor, Alexander Finta. This bust is a gift to the Public Library at Cleveland from the American-Hungarians of that city, and is exhibited as a finished work at the Brooklyn Museum for the first time in this country.
Although Kossuth, the politician and statesman who is so well known in this country as a patriot, was the head of the revolutionary movement of 1848, Petöfi the young poet is always thought of as the spirit and spark of that movement. He is ranked among the highest of the immortals of Hungary.
At the age of twenty he made the best translation that exists of Shakespeare's "Coriolanus" into Hungarian. He gave all of his talent and ardent spirit to his country and even shed the last drop of his blood for its liberation as he died from the bayonet of a Russian soldier in the battle of Segesvar, 1846.
Mr. Finta is becoming well known in this country though some of his commissions, such as the bust of Cardinal Hayes now in the Metropolitan Museum; the bronze portrait of Countess Szecheny (formerly (Gladys Vanderbilt); bronze portrait of Count Apponyi in the National Museum at Budapest; and the bust of Senator Robert F. Wagner. He will have several pieces in the forthcoming Sculpture Exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.
Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1916 - 1930. 04-06_1930, 087. View Original
