Barki Gergely et al.: Czóbel. A French Hungarian painter - ArtMill publications 5. (Szentendre, 2014)
Emőke Bodonyi: Czóbel's water colours and graphic works
On the following page: 171. Béla Czóbel: Portrait of József Rippl-Rónai, 1920S. Szentendre, Ferenczy Museum 172. Béla Czóbel: Hunter with Pipe, no date. Szentendre, Ferenczy Museum 173. Béla Czóbel: Female Half Nude with Raised Left Arm, 1920s. Szentendre, Ferenczy Museum 174. Béla Czóbel: Elbowing Woman, 1920s. Szentendre, Ferenczy Museum 170. Béla Czóbel: Sitting Girl, 1920. Szentendre, Ferenczy Museum 25 Bölöni, György: “A párizsi szalonok [Parisian Salons]”, Jövendő [Future], June 1906, 4:3, pp 25-29. Az UTAK I, pp 154-155. 26 Szabó (op. cit. in note 2), p 12. 27 Gombosi (op. cit. in note 2), p 4. 28 Sterren, Virág van der: “Czóbel Béla és Hollandia [Béla Czóbel and Holland]”, Művészettörténeti Értesítő, [Art Historical Report], 2000, NOS. 3-4, p 205. colourist, whose hand gives rise to bold colour harmonies in an instant. Not only the future, but the present stands before him, so much interest has he stirred up with his work in such a short time.”25 “Crude, but easy hand” - these words are important from the point of the present study, hinting to Czóbel’s liberal way of representation, the deliberate means of expression. Water colour is not a minute technique for him, but a quickly drying material often combined with others, like charcoal, chalk, gouache. According to the art historian Júlia Szabó, the age is characterized by large size graphic type works ready to be put on wall, illustrating this phenomenon beside Czóbel, among others, with the works of János Kmetty, Vilmos Perlrott- Csaba, József Egry, Béla Uitz, József Nemes Lampérth, and follows the process starting from the activity of The Eight between 1909-1911.26 György Gombosi similarly stresses the results of graphic art in this period: “The years between 1910-1914 might be called the heyday of modern Hungarian drawing, with the emerging of an immense amount of interesting new ideas in drawing.”27 Beside the large scale, the bulky forms, the emphasis of the primary values of colours can also be observed, and the expressive strength of lines does not mean simple contours, but is forming the whole composition. Czóbel made water colours during his whole career, in the first decades ending with 1930 - similarly to his painting - drawings showed the search for a new style and formal renewal. His first known water colours are large size portraits, landscapes, townscapes and nudes. The Worker Boy, the Bust of a Dutch Woman, and The Path made by gouache remained to us from the Dutch period. The repeated use of water colour and gouache might have also been in connection with the economic situation of the age, when buying the basic materials, oil paint and canvas was not easy. The study of Virág van der Sterren is aiming at this, too, when hinting to the bad financial situation of the artist: “In the last years of the war the want of food was increasingly stressing, the quality of canvas and painting materials turned from bad to worse.”28 The Worker Boy (1917) and The Path (1916) are characterized with a representation containing elements of drawing, a geometric deformation of motifs closed in a strict system of lines (Plates 104,161). Similarly to the latter, perspective formed by placing behind each other motifs surrounded by strong contours is featuring the drawing of the Bergen windmill known to us by photo (Plate 102). Interestingly, the water colour of his daughter Lisa made at the same time, misses this constructed method of representation, and in an easier way uses loose patches for the shadow and the colourful dress (Plate 100). The already mentioned Dutch Woman (1918), however, does not have depth (Plate 99), compared to the former constructed compositions, the way 114 CZÓBEL, A FRENCH HUNGARIAN PAINTER
