Barki Gergely et al.: Czóbel. A French Hungarian painter - ArtMill publications 5. (Szentendre, 2014)
Gergely Barki: Czóbel from Paris to Paris 1903-1925
DEAD END AND THE EIGHT As his letters and other sources clearly show, Czóbel’s art then came to an impasse.44 In an essay that appeared in November 1907, marking the end of the period, Michel Puy noted the signs of his creative slump, “a total collapse”.45 The quick decline of Fauvism certainly unnerved Czóbel, but at the same time the swift of many French and Hungarian colleagues in favour of a classicizing direction left him untouched. What they drew from it in their later work, Cézanne’s mode of seeing, was unsuited to Czóbel’s disposition. Disturbing for him, too, was the spreading dominion of Cubism. Thus, it seemed that all gateways to further development had been closed to him. Still, as a mature artist, he was not willing to sacrifice his autonomy. As an old man, Czóbel recalled in an 44 Proof that this artistic slump did indeed affect Czóbel for so long can be found in a letter that Sándor Ziffer wrote to Tibor Boromisza (presumably in 1911): “Czóbel, as I’ve heard here, has set down his paintbrush for good. He can’t climb out of this dead end. Now he’s living off his inheritance with a Russian woman in Nice. Over the past two years, his pictures have been refused everywhere.” András-Bernáth, p 167. 45 Michel Puy: “Le Fauves”, La Phalange, November 1907, p 450. 46 Prukner Pál: “A kilencvenedik születésnap. Czóbel Béla festőművész köszöntése” [Béla Czóbel’s 90th Birthday Greetings]”, Fejérmegyei Hírlap [Fejér County News], 2 September 1973, [n.p.]. 47 Hungarian National Gallery, Archive, Inv. No. 4574/3. 48 György Bölöni’s letter to Itóka, from Budapest, 6 October 1909. Bölöni-Itóka, p 78. 73. Béla Czóbel: Red Nude Statue II, 1909. Monaco, László and Hajni Iván’s collection 74. Béla Czóbel: Red Nude Statue, 1908. Private collection, not on exhibition interview how Picasso had offered him a studio space around 1907. “I didn’t accept it,” he related. “Picasso then was already a great artist, and great artists always exert an overwhelming influence on their surroundings.”46 According to the address and other details contained in a certain letter, he wrote the following to Béla Lázár, sometime after the spring of 1908. “My work proceeds with great difficulty. I made many mistakes with the things I displayed in the Salon [sic!]. I must abandon results that I have achieved with much effort, and abandoning results is just as much work as achieving them. It’s bitterer, at least.”47 György Bölöni’s letter to Itóka informs us that the situation had not changed by autumn of the next year. “Czóbel’s been here for a couple of days. He came home from Paris in the middle of the summer. Since then, he’s worked in Volosca, and he will return there. He is aged, full of doubts, and prone to panic: what’s to become of his pictures? He brought tiny drawings and showed them - well begun, he struggles to bring great things out of them. I don’t believe he’ll crack up. It would be sad for me if he got stuck and I could not believe in his talent any longer.”48 Nonetheless, Bölöni did believe in Czóbel’s talent, and in the summer of 1909, he succeeded in acquiring two 58 CZÓBEL, A FRENCH HUNGARIAN PAINTER
