Barki Gergely et al.: Czóbel. A French Hungarian painter - ArtMill publications 5. (Szentendre, 2014)
Mimi Kratochwill: Béla Czóbel's mature period, 1925-1976
201. Béla Czóbel: The Notre Dame in Paris, AFTER 1925. PRIVATE COLLECTION 202. Béla Czóbel: Paris Street Detail (previously: Houses in Berlin), around 1925. Private collection Written by Christian Rohlfs. ; The Hungarian Royal Embassy, Paris, Letter dated on 6 March 1923 to Czóbel in Berlin. Czóbel’s works - of which many have yet to be displayed in any exhibitions in Hungary - bring to the fore the artist’s human and intellectual greatness, as well as the place he occupies in fine arts and his outstanding significance. Exhibitions played a major role in the various periods of his life, as did his correspondence, photographs and the reports written about him replete with important hidden information among their lines. During his long life his friends - almost all of whom accompanied him from the early twentieth century in the spirit of admiration and recognition - parted from him only upon his death. They included noted art historians, writers and painters, admirers both young and old, as well as many of his models, all of whom, occupied a place upon once coming close to him. In December 1925, after Berlin, Czóbel was a resident of house No. 71 on Avenue du Main Paris.1 From 1902 to 1925 he had spent longer or shorter periods of time wandering around Europe (Nagybánya/Baia Mare, Munich, Paris, Amsterdam, Bergen, Berlin), and it was this “apprentice year”, which lasted over twenty years that affected the young painterthe most intimately, exerting its influence upon him later, too, and also accompanying him in his French period from 1925. How his works were received and the enormous success of his exhibitions is known to us from the enormous coverage by the press and literature. Looking at his paintings, studies and graphics up until 1925, which we cannot look at in their entirety due to the works that were lost during World War I,2 we have before us an artistic career rich with masterpieces. After he returned to Paris, his new life immediately began with painting. The Quartier Latin, the colourful cavalcade of the Montparnasse had changed somewhat since he left it behind in 1914, but his favourite cafés, the Dome, the Coupole, the little street markets, shops and street corners received him like an old acquaintance, as they had before. He found his old friends and acquaintances - some of whom were already at rest in the nearby cemetery - and with work he tried to forget the missing absence of his family (his wife, Isolde Daig and his daughter, Lisa) he had left behind in Germany. Shortly after this time, he moved into the Hotel du Notre Dame on the banks of the River Seine, where several of his friends and acquaintances lived. The surroundings offered numerous scenes for painting (the banks of the Seine with its wharfs, the Notre Dame Cathedral, the church of Saint Julien le Pauvre, squares and street details), which he depicted in his pictures. The picture 128 CZOBEL, A FRENCH HUNGARIAN PAINTER
