Passuth Krisztina – Szücs György – Gosztonyi Ferenc szerk.: Hungarian Fauves from Paris to Nagybánya 1904–1914 (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2006/1)
HUNGARIAN FAUVES CASE STUDIES - GERGELY BARKI: The Evolution of Czóbel's Fauvism in the Mirror of his Early Portraits
GERGELY BARKI The Evolution of Czóbel's Fauvism in the Mirror of his Early Portraits Any thorough analysis of the ascendancy of modern art In early twentieth-century Hungary has previously been hindered by the fact that an unusually large percentage of the artworks has either been destroyed or gone missing. In addition, insufficient work has been done in processing the available documents, as serious work on the subject has begun only recently. Under these conditions, the tasks of drawing an adequate picture of the period and outlining the development of the stylistic tendencies in Hungary seem almost impossible, while also carrying the risk that the resulting picture will be distorted. In studying the influence that Fauvism in particular exerted on Hungarian art, we encounter the same problems. In order to get as clear and as differentiated a picture as possible, we have chosen to survey a traditional genre, portrait painting, in the mirror of a single oeuvre, in the course of which we hope to discover some general tendencies. Our choice fell on the portrait painting of Béla Czóbel (4 September, 1883 - 29 January, 1976) not only because his accomplishment —next to Berény's, of course —was both the most outstanding in Hungarian Fauvism and the one that most readily correlated with French Fauvism, but also because in his case we are fortunate enough to have access to a sufficiently large number of paintings to carry out our work. Apparently, Czóbel had portrait painters in his ancestry. 1 The tradition seems to have run in the family, as he executed a fair number of portraits during the period in question. As we were doing our research in preparation for the exhibition, a number of his previously unknown works have turned up. Furthermore, in the form of recently discovered reproductions it has now become possible to publish quite a few paintings, which are currently in hiding. So when and how did Czóbel, the "uncouth Fauve", turn "wild"? Czóbel's displays of temper raised some eyebrows already during his first stay at Nagybánya. According to the writer Józsi Jenő Tersánszky, Czóbel grew so irritated over the fact that he kept mucking up his fine /. Béla Czóbel in front of his studio in Cité Falguière in the spring of 1908 Photo by Gelett Burgess (The Architectural Record, 1910)
