Barki Gergely et al.: Czóbel. A French Hungarian painter - ArtMill publications 5. (Szentendre, 2014)
Gergely Barki: Czóbel from Paris to Paris 1903-1925
121. Béla Czóbel: Bath-house, 1921. Private collection, not on exhibition 122. Béla Czóbel: In front of a house with Green Foliage, 1922. Private collection 123. Béla Czóbel: Park with Bending Trees, around 1922. Private collection 124. Béla Czóbel: The Surroundings of Würzburg, 1920. Private collection 102 Hestermann mentions Czóbel in his autobiographical novel as one of the wildest of the Parisian Fauves he had ever encountered. (“Der Wildesten einer war dagegen der Ungar Béla Czóbel.”) In: Ahlers- Hestermann, Friedrich: Pause vor dem dritten Akt. Hamburg: Verlag Gebr. Mann, 1949, p 167. 103 Photocopies of Czóbel’s letters written to Paul Sanders are preserved in the Archives of the Hungarian National Gallery. Inv. No. 20865/1981. SUMMERS IN WÜRZBURG It was Czóbel’s custom to spend his summers in the countryside, farfrom the bustle of the city, and so it was the case in Germany, too. Starting in 1920, one of his wife’s female friends, the painter Gertraud Rostovsky, regularly invited the couple to spend the summer months at her place in Würzburg. In those years, a genuine artist colony developed out of it. Here Czóbel was able to meet Otto Modersohn and Anton Kerschbaumer, as well as to reunite with Friedrich Ahlers-Hestermann, whom he had known from Paris.102They embarked on excursions (sometimes together, sometimes alone) to paint the neighbouring villages, often straying as far as Wertheim. Czóbel’s numerous wonderful landscapes are the fruits of his summers in Wurzburg. He regularly informed his Belgian friend, Paul Sanders, about his work, and the latter even visited him once here. On the basis of letters written to him, we are able to identify many of Czóbel’s works which, unfortunately, survived only as reproductions.103 Among the landscapes born during the summers in Würzburg, we know 86 CZÓBEL, A FRENCH HUNGARIAN PAINTER
