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

Gergely Barki: Czóbel from Paris to Paris 1903-1925

83. Béla Czóbel: Bistro in Cormeilles, 1913(?). Private collection

A graphic enterprise can be somewhat connected to the activity of The Eight. This was initiated and organized by Róbert Berény, and in that Czóbel, too, took part. In the course of the undertaking, publicized under the title Sketchbooks of Six Hungarian Painters, he could have prepared the etching entitled Sitting Woman (Plate 76), but we do not know whether he did so in Budapest or in Paris.

The following year, however, he certainly visited Hungary. A host of documents have made known the summer he spent in Nyergesújfalu with Károly Kernstok in 1913, and Czóbel himself frequently recalled this period. It undoubtedly was the time when the legendary, voluntary picture destruction occurred, whereby Kernstok and he together buried works he had created that summer under the manure piles at the edge of the estate’s vineyard.54

54 “When my friend, Béla Czóbel stayed with me in Nyergesújfalu, we buried an entire summer’s worth of his work in the furrows of ploughed earth under the grapes. Perhaps that’s why I love the wine from Nyerges!” Kernstok, Károly: “Vallomás [Statement]”, in: Ernst Museum Exhibitions. Exhibition of the Gusztáv Magyar-Mannheimer Legacy - Collection of Paintings and Drawings by Károly Kernstok, 13 March - 3 April 1938, p 15.

84. Béla Czóbel: Study, around 1913. Missing

85. Béla Czóbel: Nyergesújfalu, 1913. Missing

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CZÓBEL, A FRENCH HUNGARIAN PAINTER

82. CORM El LLES AT THE BEGINNING OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. POSTCARD, PRIVATE COLLECTION