Barki Gergely - Gulyás Gábor: Újragondolt Czóbel. A szentendrei Czóbel Múzeum állandó kiállítása (Szentendre, 2016)

Engaged to Szentendre (1936-1945)

Czóbel first visited Szentendre, the town of painters, in the middle of the 1930s, upon the invitation of Ferenc Lehel. This was where he met his second wife, Mária Modok, who was also a painter; he may have owed his lifelong attachment to the town to her. In contrast to Paris, Szentendre became a scene of tranquillity for him, where he had his own house, to which they later added an atelier. Czóbel was enchanted by the atmosphere of the small town and its environs, the friendly community of painters who worked there and in the colony in the summer. His (temporary) influence on Jenő Barcsay and Endre Bálint was evident at the time, though they never became his imitators. The main square, the narrow streets, the surrounding hills, the trees in blossom in his garden, the friends visiting him, were all motifs for him worthy of treatment. His mode of painting became more and more relaxed, with the former strong contours fading, while he continued to be intrigued by perennial issues of the art. As a gesture of recognition, in 1945 his fellow artists elected him president of the Society of Szentendre Painters. From the same year, he took part at several of the exhibitions of the newly formed European School (Európai Iskola), which represented modern Hungarian endeavours in the post-war scene, and which elected him an honorary member.

Paris and Szentendre: the two constants (1945-1976)

Despite his attachment to French culture, he never disowned his native country, and remained a Hungarian citizen all along. Uniquely, he was allowed to come and go freely between Paris and Szentendre even in the darkest days of Stalinism. The authorities also turned a blind eye to his regular exhibitions at Galerie Zak in Paris, and to his selling his Szentendre paintings for convertible currency in the "decadent” West. Perhaps even the cultural policy makers of that infamous period realized Czóbel was the "most competent” ambassador of Hungarian painting. He was paid an annuity from 1947, and his work was regularly acknowledged with prestigious awards (Kossuth Prize; Artist of Merit and Artist of Excellence titles; Order of Labour, Golden Class). In 1966 he was given an apartmentwith an atelier on Kelenhegyi Road, Budapest. In addition to prestigious private and public collections in Hungary, his works found their way into France, Switzerland, Germany, the United States and Japan, fittingly representing the best in Hungarian painting.

He owed his extraordinary productivity to a rigorous working method and his eagerness to be exempt from the influence of external factors. Working every day with commitment and devotion, his diligence was stimulated by a purely painterly attitude, as a result of which an astonishingly large proportion of his paintings are masterworks. Czóbel always adhered to his own schedule while working, barely shaken in his calling by wars or revolutions. He did his best to free himself from the influence of political and social strife, devoting his whole being to painting.

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