Barki Gergely et al.: Czóbel. A French Hungarian painter - ArtMill publications 5. (Szentendre, 2014)
Gergely Barki: Czóbel from Paris to Paris 1903-1925
145. Béla Czóbel: Girl with Birdcage, 1922. Private collection Two years later, in 1924, at the First General German Art Exhibition in Moscow (the first such exhibition of foreign artists there), his work was shown among 130 other artists, and he was identified as a member of the so-called Red Group.117 Yet, it is likely that he had no direct affiliation with the politically-committed group here, either. While his brother, Ernő was a left-wing public figure and a vehement presence in politics, the painter consciously avoided every political situation. In the Berlin period, he participated at other exhibitions abroad as well,118 but some of these could be only considered ‘abroad’ from Berlin, since he appeared with his collection in the Belvedere Salon in Budapest (after remaining away for a decade) in February of the year 1924 to present his best works painted in the Netherlands and Germany. Naturally, press reaction was hot and cold as before. For instance, one journalist briefly stated, “Czóbel’s somewhat humorous and joyful vision is a general feature of the most modern German decadence out of Paris.”119 In that year and the subsequent years, he exhibited works at the exhibitions of the KÚT (Képzőművészek Új Társasága / New Association of Visual Artists). At their first exhibition, organized in 1924, his intriguingly titled paintings (e.g., From the Time of Tutankhamen) aroused attention. Nowadays, unfortunately, these paintings are not identifiable. Czóbel, however, did not return to Hungary then; only his pictures made guest appearances. A financially strong circle of collectors held him in Berlin for a while. Outside those collectors already mentioned (and listed in Ernő Kállai’s monograph on Czóbel as well), Dr Haustein possessed a prestigious collection, but each of his Czóbel paintings were lost. Reproduced by Kállai were two landscapes near Wurzburg (Plates 133 and 136) and a marvellous interior with peculiar perspective, in which further unknown paintings can be seen (Plate 131). These pictures are sorely missing from the Berlin section of the present exhibition. In his summarizing book Neue Malerei in Ungarn, published in 1925, Kállai presents reproductions of two additional Czóbel pieces once owned by Dr Haustein: a water colour portrait of a girl painted in the Netherlands, as well as his most mature primitivist creation of the Berlin period, Boy with Dog, painted in 1921 (Plate 139). In Kállai’s book Response to Matisse]”, in: Nulla dies sine linea. Tanulmányok Passuth Krisztina hetvenedik születésnapjára [Studies for the 70th Birthday of Krisztina Passuth]. Ágnes Berecz, Mária L. Molnár and Erzsébet Tatai (eds). Budapest, 2007, pp 90-98. 112 Scheffler, Karl: “Die Ausstellung der Freie Sezession”, Kunst und Künstler (Berlin), 1923, 21:7, p 215. 113 Regarding this topic, see: Engelhardt, Katrin: Ferdinand Möller und seine Galerie. Ein Kunsthändler in Zeiten historischer Umbrücke, dissertation. Hamburg University, 2013. 114 Engelhardt, Katrin: Verkaufsstellung von Werken zeitgenössischer Kunst. Berlin: Galerie Ferdinand Möller (Schönberger Ufer 38), December 1927 - January 1928. 115 Based on research done by Andrea Dunai, Czóbel exhibited the following pictures: at Frühjahrsausstellung, 1924 (Der Jäger, Blick auf Neustadt an der Saale, Landschaft); at Herbstausstellung, 1924 (Landschaft); at Frühjahrsausstellung, 1925 (Ruhendes Mädchen, Carmen-Modell, Stilleben); at Herbstausstellung, 1925 (Häuser, Gespann im Walde, Knabenkopf [drawing]); and at Frühjahrsausstellung, 1927 (Figur, Interieur). 116 Große Berliner Kunstausstellung (Akademie der Künste), 1922. 117 Mácza, János: “Adatok és dokumentumok. Külföldi kapcsolatoka húszas években [Data and Documents. Foreign Connections in the I920s]”. Excerpts from the source collection entitled Fifteen Years of Soviet Art. János Mácza, L. Reinhardt and L. Rempel (eds). Moscow - Leningrad: Ogiz-lzogiz, 1933. Kritika [Critics], November 1968, p 38. 118 Baj Kay, Éva (op. cit. in note 111) incorrectly lists the Viennese Belvedere as one of his exhibition halls, and Mimi Kratochwill is presumably also wrong when she writes about him participating at the Viennese Sezessio Exhibition [sic!] (KRATOCHWILL 2001, p 32) instead of the Berliner Freie Secession. Czóbel in his letter dated 20 June 1920 and written to Sanders, presumably mentions his appearance at the exhibition of the Berliner Freie Secession (Hungarian National Gallery, Archive, Inv. No. 20865/1981/6). It makes the issue further more complicated that - based on research done by Werner J. Schweiger - Czóbel took part at the Internationale Kunstausstellung in Vienna in 1924, as an artist representing the Galerie Dr. Goldschmidt -Dr. Wallenstein (Schweiger, op. cit. in note 106). Rudolf Wacker, one of Czóbel’s fellow Berlin painters, also mentions Czóbel in his diary entry on 8 September 1925, in connection with the Internationale Kunstausstellung organized in Zürich (Kunsthaus Zürich, 8 August - 30 September 1925). In: Wacker, Rudolf: Tagebücher 7973-7939. Rudolf Sagmeister (ed). Vaduz: Topos Verlag, 1990, vol. 2, p 445. I would hereby like to thank Gábor Kaszás for drawing my attention to this source and other sources relating to Czóbel’s Berlin period. CZÓBEL FROM PARIS TO PARIS, 1903-1925 97
