Barki Gergely et al.: Czóbel. A French Hungarian painter - ArtMill publications 5. (Szentendre, 2014)
László Jurecskó: Béla Czóbel in Nagybánya
9. Béla Czóbel: Slovak Man with Hat, 1904. Kaposvár, Rippl-Rónai Museum io. Béla Czóbel: Worker, 1903-1904. Budapest History Museum 19 “The Hungarian painter, Béla Czóbel has achieved great success in Paris, at the Julian Artist Academy, where the most talented of the new generation of artists converge from every corner of the world. Out of two hundred competitors, they awarded him their scholarship, emphasizing his work’s extraordinary originality.” In: [n.a.]: “Magyar festő sikere [Hungarian Painter’s Success]”, Budapesti Napló [Budapest Journal], 12 April 1904, p lO. Az Utak I, p 74. “The Parisian painting academy awarded this year’s large scholarship to a pupil from the Nagybánya painter’s school. It was won by Béla Czóbel.” In: [n.a.]: “Művészeti hír [Art News]”, Nagybánya és vidéke [Greater Nagybánya], 17 April 1904, 30:16, p 3. AZ UTAK I, p 75. 20 In the aforementioned letter to Jenő Murádin, he writes about his fellow painter: “Here I came to know Maticska, and our common enthusiasm and love of painting brought us together into the warmest of friendships. He was a true painting talent. I watched his work with great amazement. When I returned from Paris, it was a breath of fresh air, the outlook I learned from him, to be sensitive to every mortal spirit. This sensitivity would have taken him far. He was a simple lad, but as a painter, he promised to to Munich; he went to Paris, the capital of modern art. He won the Parisian Julian Academy’s contest in i904.19The bravura drawing and bold perspective certainly proved that Czóbel was armed with every tool of drawing knowledge needed for his discipline. No obstacle barred him in this respect (Plate 29). His later forms and figures rendered in a distorted, sommaire style prove the tenet that only those who draw excellently are capable of misdrawing well. The paintings Czóbel completed in 1903 and 1904 clearly show that he could provide solutions to the problems posed by plein air painting and overcome them. It is strange, presaging his later periods as a Neo and a Fauve, that among his themes, unlike his masters, we do not find landscapes in the classical sense. He primarily painted portraits, self-portraits, figures placed in landscape settings, cityscapes and buildings. In his portraits, beyond the depiction of light effects, he strove to convey psychological depth as well. In his Self-portrait painted in 1903, he departs from the Rembrandt palette (Plate 8). It is no longer the boyish-looking artist (as seen in the previous photo) he sets before us, but a somewhat exalted painter knowingly undertaking his calling. Meanwhile, in the sunny self-portrait completed that summer, a stubborn painter aware of his self-worth squints back at us (plate 12). On this canvas, as well as in his portrait of fellow painter B. L. (Plate 13), we may notice for the first time the blending of Ferenczy’s patchy and Grünwald’s streaky styles of painting. He applies blobs of paint when depicting the painter’s pullover and the grass and flowers in the background. The product of 1904 clearly attests to the young painter’s arrival. Especially outstanding is the portrait of his good friend and fellow painter Jenő Maticska, which he dedicated to the artist (Plate 11).20 Proclaimed a genius, this born talent, who painted pictures of serious quality in Nagybánya despite his young age, possesses a sad, faraway look that contains awareness of the inevitable. His fatal lung illness gave Jenő Maticska only a year and a half to live before his resulting death at the age of 21. 18 CZÓBEL, A FRENCH HUNGARIAN PAINTER
