Barki Gergely et al.: Czóbel. A French Hungarian painter - ArtMill publications 5. (Szentendre, 2014)
László Jurecskó: Béla Czóbel in Nagybánya
5. Tibor Boromisza: A Sunny Meadow, 1905. Private collection 6. Jenő Maticska: Flower Hill, around 1904. Private collection 7. Béla Iványi-Grünwald: Drying Clothes, around 1903. Private collection 12 “Around this time, Grünwald was preparing for Rome. I joined him. [...] Grünwald’s unbending industry increased my own appetite for work. We wandered with Maticska under the dark cypresses in the Villa Borghese.” Boromisza, Tibor: “Följegyzések [Memoirs]”, Élet és Litteratura [Life and Literature], 15 September 1912, p 8. A Nagybányai 11, p 244. 13 Kézdi-Kovács László: “A Nemzeti Szalon őszi tárlata [The National Salon’s Autumn Exhibition]”, Pesti Hírlap [Pest City News], 18 October 1903, p 5. Az Utak I, p 57. 14 Nemzeti Szalon Téli Kiállítása [National Salon Winter Exhibition], catalogue. Budapest: Nemzeti Szalon, 1904. (I must express thanks here to György Bélái for making possible my research of the Artchivum material.) 15 See Notes 10 and 11. 16 “Hall XVI, No. 600. Czóbel, Béla: Portrait. Oil painting. Sold.” In: Országos Magyar Képzőművészeti Társulat, Műcsarnok, Téli Kiállítás 1904/05 [National Hungarian Fine Arts Company, Art Hall, Winter Exhibition 1904/05]. Budapest: Singer & Wolfner Publication. (I must express thanks here to György Szűcs for bringing to my attention the picture’s subsequent dating, confirmed in writing with the very same paint on the back of the picture.) prove these words. Practically everyone painted in this style, which was considered compulsory. Grünwald’s temperament also differed from the others’. As a leader, he was much more liberal and direct than his colleagues. His relationships with students tended to be friendships. For example, in the autumn of 1904, after winning the Fraknói Grant, he travelled with Jenő Maticska and Tibor Boromisza to Rome, where they worked together.12 Still, to return to our starting point, what was it that distinguished Grünwald’s painting from the others’?The difference is a seemingly insignificant renewal in painting technique: the blending of streaks and thick masses of paint with patchy application results in characteristic surfaces with nervous brush handling. This lends a sort of mobile, expressive febrility to his canvases (Plate 7). Naturally, I do not wish to present these discoveries as new innovations. Still, it is worth considering what an important role this style played in the development of modern painting. Only consider the first avant-garde style, Fauvism, and the pictures Matisse and Derain painted in Collioure, then later in London. Matisse was the first to use this technique in his work Nude in the Studio from 1898. Grünwald’s chief merit is not that he discovered this technique, but that he sought out an appropriate expressive form, thus uncovering a new path in painting for himself and his students, who took advantage of its opportunities - for example, Jenő Maticska in Flower Hill (Plate 6) and Tibor Boromisza in a Sunny Meadow (Plate 5). Czóbel, too, used this technique, which accompanied him, beginning with Portrait of the Painter B. L. and Self-portrait (1903) and continuing through Sitting Peasant and Ferenc Lehel in Nagybánya (1904), Castle Garden, Old Woman from Brügge and View from the Hotel Room (1905), all that way to Painters in the Open Air (1906), just to mention the most characteristic and significant works. It is the accepted view that the palette of Czóbel’s Nagybánya pictures - precisely speaking, those dated between 1902 and 1904 - grow progressively brighter with increasingly intense colours. Sunlight shines through them. We may accept the term sommaire (rough, unfinished), as corroborated by critics at the time. Unlike his later companions, the Neos, Czóbel was not averse to the main strongholds of official art; he took part in exhibitions at the Art Hall [Műcsarnok] and National Salon [Nemzeti Szalon]. He first displayed at the National Salon’s autumn exhibition in 1903. The conservative painter and critic, László Kézdi-Kovács commented on the youths on display, “Valér Ferenczy, Béla Czóbel and Jenő Maticska represent the Nagybánya direction with solid, albeit glaring power.”13 In any case, these three names indicate that they cleared the bar which the conservative jury had set before them. Czóbel followed this debut with an appearance the following year, two further works in two rooms at the National Salon’s winter exhibition. According to the catalogue, in Hall II, picture No. 190 was “Czóbel, Béla: In Nagybánya (oil) sold”, while in Hall IV, picture No. 279 was “Czóbel, Béla (plein air) oil painting”.14 Presumably, the former could be the painting 16 CZÓBEL, A FRENCH HUNGARIAN PAINTER
