Szücs György: „Kinyilatkoztatás” Szobotka Imre kubista korszaka. 1912–1922 (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2004/1)

SUMMARY "The Tidings Brought to Mary" Imre Szobotka's Cubist Period, 1912-1922 The Budapest city gallery, Belvedere Szalon, put up a one-man exhibition by Imre Szobotka (1890-1961) in November-December 1921. The exhibition could just as much be regarded as the closure of his first period, the cubist quest, as the beginning of a new, synthesizing direction; for he successfully blended the rationalism of cubist pictorial vision of the inter-war period with the sensuality of expressive pictorialness. The painter himself categorized his style as cuboexpressionism. For the Belvedere exhibition, he selected some earlier works as well, such as the oils painted in Paris and Meudon in 1911, and he also presented a number of the illustrations for Paul Claudel's mystery play, The Tidings Brought to Mary (1 91 2), which he had made during his Bretagne internment in World War I. Arriving in Paris to his friend, József Csáky, in 1910, he commenced his studies in the painters' school headed by Metzinger and Le Fauconnier. At the time, there were several Hungarian painters working in Paris; some came under the influence of Matisse and the Fauves; others, like Csáky, Alfréd Réth and István Farkas, were drawn to cubism. Szobotka was deeply impressed by the cubists's room at the 1911 Salon des Indépendants; and, by 1913 and 1914, he exhibited his work together with them, being particularly proud of the fact that cubist theoretician Guillaume Apollinaire also took note of his pictures. Szobotka did not belong to "analytical" cubism, which carried out colour-reductionist formal analysis; rather, he inclined to Zenész, 1913-14 (kat 22.) Két festő műteremben, 1913-14 (kat. 19.)