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
24. Béla Czóbel: Female Portrait, 1907. Unknown location In connection with the above-mentioned portrait, we must bring up two other portraits of uncertain authorship, presumably also made in 1906. Despite the fact that it is unfinished and, therefore, unsigned, the composition entitled Nagybánya Model in Garden (Fig. 14, Cat. No. 137) provides a very close analogy of the portrait of a Paris student, both as far as style, conception and the execution of details are concerned. Czóbel's authorship is further supported by the presence of the blurred remnants of a Nagybánya landscape on the back of the painting, which resembles Czóbel's Village Street from 1906. (Cat. No. 109) We should also point out, however, that in connection with this particular painting the names of those painters, who worked with Czóbel at Nagybánya around 1906, have also been put forward as possible authors. Besides Rezső Bálint's lost painting entitled My Mother and Nana Kukovetz's only known work coming out of Nagybánya in 1906 (Cat. No. 164), the closest analogy of the composition in question is Vilmos Huszár's garden scene, which the Hungarian viewers now can see again (Cat. No. 134). Ervin Körmendi Frim's name has also popped up in the list of possible authors. He was probably the model of a recently reemerged portrait, which was attributed to Czóbel in the inventory book of the Budapest Jewish Musem. (Fig. 25, Cat. No. 115) Zoltán Rockenbauer, who published it in reproduction, dated the work to cca. 1907. 49 In the course of our research, we entertained the idea that it was a self-portrait by Körmendi Frim, rather than a portrait by Czóbel. Our job in attributing and dating the painting was made more difficult by the fact that most of the compositions Körmendi Frim had produced between 1905 and 1909 are in hiding; in reconstructing his style, we can only rely on a single landscape 50 and a portrait 51 made around this time, as well as on the contemporary press reviews available. In connection with Ervin Körmendi Frim's works exhibited at the 1906 exhibition of the Salon d'Automne, which included the study of a head, 52 Lajos Fülep wrote the following: "Ervin Körmendi Frim seems to have taken quite a close look at Czóbel's material." 53 We know that Czóbel and Körmendi Frim worked together at Nagybánya in the summer of 1906, and that they sent their works to the Salon d'Automne jointly. 54 Therefore, Czobel must have exerted a powerful influence on his younger colleague, of whom he produced a portrait in ink around this time; this portrait also featured Sándor Ziffer, who in turn made a drawing of Czóbel still in the same summer. We fail to detect the most important element of Czóbel's characteristic style from around 1906, i.e. the strong contours, in the earlier-mentioned portrait of doubtful authorship. In Czóbel's case this particular feature can probably be traced to the influence of both Van Gogh and Rippl-Rónai. From the viewpoint of style, those Czóbel compositions, which we can definitely date to 1906, are more closely related to the works of the two earlier-mentioned artists, than they are to Fauvism. In my opinion, Czóbel's complete transformation into a par excellence Fauve painter came only at the end of that year, following the exhibition at the Salon d'Automne, by which time the glorious days of French Fauvism, paradoxically, had already drawn to a close. His contemporaries and colleagues of a more conservative outlook noticed a change in his artistic attitude and a genuine turn in his style only on seeing the works he exhibited in the spring of 1907. István Csók, Czóbel's older colleague and future godfather, informed Lajos Fülep of the artist's successes at the 23. Béla Czóbel: Portrait in Blue (Female Profile), cca. 1907. Cat. No. 119.
