John Bednar and Eugene Kormendi: the filling of the niches

the 1940s · the campus beautification project

The project: In the early 1940s, in the middle of the Second World War, Notre Dame set out to fill the empty niches on its buildings — some twenty of them, several vacant for decades — with sculpture. The men who filled them were the Rev. John J. Bednar, C.S.C., head of the art department, who had taken his M.F.A. in sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1940 and introduced sculpture into the department's program that year, and Eugene Kormendi, the Hungarian sculptor brought to campus by Father Szabo of South Bend. Seventeen sculptures were completed by the two men; the university's Scholastic was reporting the installations' progress by August 1944. Bednar's own photographed works include statues of St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Jerome, St. Joan of Arc, St. Michael the Archangel, St. Augustine, St. Patrick and Cardinal Newman; the war memorial portico of the Sacred Heart Church was completed in May 1944, and the Grotto received its three-sided drinking fountain carved with Our Lord at the well.

Eugene Kormendi (1889–1959): born in Budapest — the university archives' collection listing gives his birth year as 1886, the Smithsonian's as 1889 — Kormendi studied at the Academy of Budapest and went to Paris to work with Auguste Rodin and Jean Paul Lorenz. Brought to Notre Dame through the Szabo visit, he stayed: from 1947 he was the university's sculptor in residence until the end of his career. His campus works include the St. Thomas More and Christ the King of the Law School building — both lost, disposed of when the Law School addition was built in 2010 — and the St. Christopher at the entrance of the Rockne Memorial. Beyond the campus, the Smithsonian's record credits him with a war memorial at Valparaiso, Indiana, and a twenty-two-foot Christ, Light of the World, for the National Catholic Welfare Conference in Washington, D.C., where he died in 1959.

Sources:

1. University of Notre Dame Archives, "Art" (sites.nd.edu/ndarchives) — Bednar's account of the beautification project, the 1940 M.F.A. and the introduction of sculpture into the art program, the Szabo–Kormendi visit, the Scholastic article of August 18, 1944, and the Kormendi works list with the 2010 disposition of the Law School statues.
2. University of Notre Dame Archives, "Art on Campus" (archives.nd.edu) — the seventeen sculptures by Bednar and Kormendi, the May 1944 war memorial portico, and the Grotto fountain.
3. Smithsonian American Art Museum, artist record for Eugene Kormendi — the Budapest birth of 1889, the Rodin and Lorenz years, the sculptor-in-residence position, the Valparaiso memorial and the Washington Light of the World, and the 1959 death in Washington.
4. University of Notre Dame Archives, John J. Bednar Photographs collection (ArchivesSpace) — the photographed Bednar statues and the studio scenes of ca. 1944.