Barki Gergely et al.: Czóbel. A French Hungarian painter - ArtMill publications 5. (Szentendre, 2014)

Gergely Barki: Czóbel from Paris to Paris 1903-1925

31. CZÓBEL VISITS THE STUDIO OF A SCULPTOR FRIEND (ÁRPÁD FÄCHER?) AT THE BEGINNING OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. PRIVATE COLLECTION

1 Czóbel, Béla: Curriculum Vitae letter. In: Az új magyar művészet önarcképe [Self-portrait of New Hungarian Art]. Budapest: Müvészbolt, n.d. [1945], pp 15-16. The exhibition, Impressions of József Rippl-Rónai, 1890-1900, could be viewed in an empty unit of the Royal Hotel’s group of rental flats from 22 December 1900.

2 According to registration in “Matrikelbücher der Bildende Künste München, 1809-1920”, Czóbel enrolled [as Béla Zobel] on 30 October

1902, in the preparatory drawing class of Johann Caspar Herterich (often erroneously identified in the scholarly literature as Ludwig Herterich). Source: www.bayerische-landesbibliothek-online.de/matrikelbuecher.

3 KézdI-Kovács László: “A Nemzeti Szalon őszi tárlatán [At the National Museum’s Autumn Exhibition]”, Pesti Hírlap [Pest City News], IO October

1903, p 5. Az utak I, pp 56-57.

4 Among others: [n.a.]: “Magyar festő sikere [Hungarian Painter’s Success]”, Budapesti Napló [Budapest Journal], 12 April 1904, p 10.

Az utak I, p 74.

5 The work came to light in April 2011, during the filming of the documentary entitled In Search of The Eight.

6 He debuted with two pictures at an exhibition of the Salon du Champ de Mars.

32. Czóbel in friendly company atthe beginning

OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. PRIVATE COLLECTION

At the beginning of his career, the experience that made an impact on his entire life’s work was an exhibition of the collected works by József Rippl-Rónai organized at one of the buildings of the Royal Hotel in Budapest. As a secondary school student, he made nearly daily pilgrimages there.1

In 1902, with his secondary school diploma in hand, he did not embark for Kaposvár, where the masters were primary importers of the modern Parisian spirit. Instead, he headed to Nagybánya (today Baia Mare, Romania), Hungary’s centre for p/e/'n air naturalism, where he began to work under the direction of the enlightened teacher Béla Iványi-Grünwald, who was open to new trends. In the autumn of that year, like many of his fellows at the painting colony, he enrolled at the academy in Munich, in the class of Johann Caspar von Herterich, a historicist painter with conservative views. Later, he became a pupil of Wilhelm von Diez.2

He spentthe following summer in Nagybánya again, and in October, he had his first showing in an exhibition in Budapest, at the National Salon’s autumn exhibition, where the press already singled out his work as representative of the Nagybánya line.3

Returning from a spell in Munich (which was practically compulsory for Nagybánya pupils, but rather disillusioning for him), from 1903 Czóbel continued his painting studies, not at the German institution, but in Paris. He enrolled at the Julian Academy, where he chose to take corrections from Jean-Paul Laurens, who was popular in Hungarian circles, too. From then on, his career and Paris were inextricable. This is probably why it became his second home. He forged friendships here and returned for longer or shorter periods. After a few forced absences, he became a successful painter here.

The following year, in the spring of 1904, Czóbel won the special prize in the school’s nude competition. Earlier we only knew of his award-winning work through contemporary press reports,4 but a few years ago we managed to locate this first successful piece in the dean’s office of the Julian Academy (Plate 29).5 That same year, in 1904, he was already displaying work at the winter exhibition of the Art Hall [Műcsarnok] in Budapest, as well as at an exhibition in the French capital.6

CZÓBEL, A FRENCH HUNGARIAN PAINTER

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