Barki Gergely et al.: Czóbel. A French Hungarian painter - ArtMill publications 5. (Szentendre, 2014)
Gergely Barki: Czóbel from Paris to Paris 1903-1925
101. Béla Czóbel: Windmill in Bergen, 1917. Szentendre, Ferenczy Museum Perhaps it is no exaggeration to state that the full-length portrait of the pastor at Bergen, F. W. J. Van den Kieboom (Plate 109) is one of the most important pieces in his entire oeuvre, not just his Holland period. Already in this period, Czóbel, like many of his Bergen colleagues, was greatly influenced by the German Expressionism, even before he moved to Berlin. Perhaps this is why we sense (in The Parson of Bergen and in his other Dutch pictures) that he has melded style characteristics that dance on the borderland between German Expressionism and French Neo-Primitivism. Nevertheless, Czóbel remained an autonomous entity, neither following nor copying anyone. In his Dutch pieces as well, there is an unmistakable pictorial world typical only of him. Presumably, he painted his Resting Woman (Plate 110), dated 1919, in the Netherlands. Two previously unpublished pictures held by private owners abroad, Reading Woman (Plate 106) and a smaller landscape, denote acquisitions from this lesser known Dutch period. Just as he could find buyers for his pictures in Paris, Czóbel came to know distinguished collectors in Bergen who purchased several of his works. One was Piet Boendermaker, a sponsor to whose circle of friends the painter belonged. He bought at least four paintings from Czóbel,76 some of which (now unfortunately lost) would interest us on the basis of their titles alone - for example, the water colour entitled as the Futurist Depiction, which Ernő Kállai mentioned in his book as being in the safekeeping of Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum.77 Among Czóbel’s Dutch collectors, 76 STERREN 2000, p 213, note 47. 77 For its safekeeping in the museum, see STERREN 2000, p 204. Ernő Kállai lists those museums that held Czóbel’s pictures at the time of his monograph’s publication. Kállai 1934, p 28 CZÓBEL FROM PARIS TO PARIS, 1903-1925 71 102. BÉLA CZÓBEL: Windmill in Bergen, 1917. Missing
