ABSTRACT
At the Milan World Exposition of 1906, Géza Maróti (1875–1941), a young artist from Hungary, stunned the international audience with his Hungarian pavilion. Not only was he awarded five grand prizes, he also was able to form an international network of architects and artists. Thanks to his new connections he received commissions not only in Milan, but also in Mexico City and later in Detroit, ambitious cities eager to polish their images. Maróti became a truly interurban player. What made him particularly successful internationally was the use of folkloric elements in his work, creating a glorious past for the emerging cities he worked for. Instrumental was his artistic “tool-kit” gleaned from a particular regional or national culture, which became “transportable” and easily adaptable elsewhere, even in culturally very different urban settings. The motifs and patterns he developed and transferred between continents were universally decodable and also offered a specific reinvented urban and/or national identity.
