Barki Gergely et al.: Czóbel. A French Hungarian painter - ArtMill publications 5. (Szentendre, 2014)

Emőke Bodonyi: Czóbel's water colours and graphic works

156. Béla Czóbel: Portrait in Blue, 1907. Szentendre, Ferenczy Museum

The reason of the relatively few number of writings on graphic works, compared to those on the paintings might have been simply explained by the fact, that Czóbel’s colourism raised greater interest, although this did not mean a kind of judgement, as in the traditional concept of drawing being the maidservant of painting. Art historian István Genthon did not find it reasonable to make a difference between Czóbel as a painter and as a graphic artist: „Czóbel in the lexical sense of the words is not a »painter and graphic artist«. His drawings and water colours are equal to his oil paintings not only in size, but in ambition as well. The technique is changed, everything else remained the same.”1

Beside the independent writings on the artist, works on twentieth century Hungarian drawings, like the books of György Gombosi, Dénes Pataky, Júlia Szabó deal in a more detailed way with Czóbel’s graphic art as an important field of his activity.2 In the last few years Czóbel’s drawings and water colours were mentioned when the nude drawings and portraits of the Hungarian “wild beasts” (Vadak or Fauves) and ofThe Eight were dealt with.3

During his whole career a large amount of high quality graphic works were made by Czóbel. There are charcoal, pencil, pen and ink, red or brown chalk, even fibre pen drawings among them, water colours and pastels of different size with picturesque quality, prints, like lithographs, etchings or cold needle etchings. Czóbel belonged to that artist generation whose daily activity was drawing. Imre Ámos described in his diary in connection with this the following: „Yesterday we were up at Szin to make sketches. Csaba (Perlrott), Kmetty, Kelemen were staying there, and unexpectedly Czóbel came, too. The work does not get on. These elderly painters - among them Czóbel, one of our greatests - are really weird, they worked with such a diligence, that we were quite astonished. It makes one think, the older we get, the better we feel the necessity of studies, it would surely be the same with us.”4 Whether these were really “only studies” or rather independent graphic works, and what was the opinion of the artist himself, might be cleared in different ways.

Czóbel’s drawings were often displayed in public, and what is more, his first recognition, the prize of the Julian Academy was given for a drawing of a sitting male nude model found recently. (Plate 29).5

In his first exhibition of 1908 in Paris, in the Berthe Weill Gallery, by the thirty paintings the same amount of graphic works were on show.6 He won another prize in the 1913 International Post- Impressionist Exhibition of the Artist House [Művészház], Budapest, where “only” two of his drawings were staged.7 In the 1913 and 1914 exhibitions of Művészház his drawings were again displayed, in the jury-free earlier one four oil paintings, four water colours and five drawings, while a year later more drawings.8 The same, latter year, he staged an etching in the exhibition of contemporary

1 Genthon, István: Czóbel. Budapest: Képzőművészeti Alap Kiadóvállalata, 1961, p IO.

2 Gombosi, György: Új magyar rajzművészet Rippl-Rónaitól a Nyolcakig [New Hungarian Drawing from Rippl- Rónai to The Eight]. Budapest: Erasmus, 1945; Pataky, Dénes:

A magyar rajzmüvészet [Hungarian Drawing], Budapest, 1960; Szabó, Júlia: Magyar rajzmüvészet 1890- 7979 [Hungarian Drawing 1890-1919]. Budapest: Corvina, 1969.

3 Bárki, Gergely: “Párizstól a paradicsomig. Utazás a magyar Vadak aktjai körül [From Paris to the Paradise. Travels around the Nudes of the Hungarian Fauves]. In: Magyar Vadak Párizstól Nagybányáig 1904-1914 [Hungarian Fauves from Paris to Nagybánya 1904-1914]. Exhibition in the Hungarian National Gallery, 21 March 2006 - 30 July, 2006. Publications of the Hungarian National Gallery, 2006, Vol. 1, pp 145-158; Die Acht - Der akt. Exhibition in the Collegium Hungaricum in Vienna. 27 September - 14 December, 2012. Catalogue with the studies of Zoltán Rockenbauerand Gergely Bárki.

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CZÓBEL, A FRENCH HUNGARIAN PAINTER