Barki Gergely et al.: Czóbel. A French Hungarian painter - ArtMill publications 5. (Szentendre, 2014)
Mimi Kratochwill: Béla Czóbel's mature period, 1925-1976
212. BÉLA CZÓBEL: GROS ROUVRE, 1926. PRIVATE COLLECTION 213. CZÓBEL IN THE GARDEN OE THE Les Pensées pensión in Dieppe - Puys prés de Dieppe at the end of the 1920s. Private collection Georges Waldemar, and others). His New York exhibition surprisingly received a great deal of attention from the press. From the beginning of the century he often spent his summers painting in the French countryside. His search for new motifs took him to quiet little towns and the seaside, although he did not do without the company of his friends during his rural retreats, and indeed some of them, including his painter friend Le Fauconnier, even lived in his country studio, for example, in Gros Rouvre. At this time Paris and France’s big cities would be all but abandoned for the summer. The vacation period was just as important to Czóbel as it was for most of his artist friends who would paint and rest close to the French seaside. For Czóbel his work was his life. He set about painting again and again, seeking his place, and while retaining some of his earlier ambitions, he left behind those of his earlier ideas about painting which he felt did not further his journey. We can discern where he stayed in the countryside from the titles of his pictures.4 He found comfortable pensions not only in Gros Rouvre but also at the “Villa Parisette” in Cros de Cagnes and the “Les Pensées” in Dieppe - Puys prés de Dieppe. He may have taken his wife and daughter wit hhimonhis summer sojourns just like on their Würzburg vacations, when they had stayed at the “Neue Welt” inn. He was awaited here, as at every other place, by his good friends, with whom he had been in Paris during the early years of the century, namely the painter Gertraud Rostosky and her friends. Another painter who painted here was the noted German painter, Otto Modersohn, who often wrote about Czóbel in his diary. They travelled around in the area together and both painted several paintings in Wertheim. 4 For example, Gros Rouvre,Entrance to the Village; Spice Shop in the Countryside; Cow In-between Trees (Dieppe); Cagnes sur Mer; Landscape in the South of France; Cagnes Countryside; Detail of a Battlement at Crimald, or Cagnes. BÉLA CZÓBEL’S MATURE PERIOD, 1925-1976 135
