Klemmné Németh Zsuzsa: Szobotka Imre 1890 - 1961. A zebegényi művészkolónia 1928 - 42 között - PMMI kiadványai. Kiállítási katalógusok 11. (Szentendre, 2005)
A “meek Cubist” in Zebegény - we could just as well give this subtitle to the Szobotka exhibition of 2005 at Szőnyi István Memorial Museum. It is the early Cubistic period of Imre Szobotka’s career that posterity considers determining. The material of the exhibitions after his death consists of such paintings almost exclusively though, in the 1930s, he also created important works in the dissolved post-Nagybánya spirit of the Gresham-circle - remarked György Szűcs, in connection with Szobotka’s exhibition of 2004, titled Manifestation, where the works presented had been selected from the canvases and graphics of the period definitely Cubistic between 1912 and 1922. Now, at the Szőnyi-house, in the series introducing the artists’ colony of Zebegény, we can show up Imre Szobotka’s side that the audience has not been familiar with so far. Owing to the artist’s daughter, Viola Szobotka, oil paintings, aquarelles and etchings created in Zebegény or in the Danube- Bend are presented, most of which have never been on show for the public. “Imre Szobotka is the only Hungarian painter who reached the point of abstract, program-like Cubism, to try to find a new way from”- stated Iván Hevesi, art writer, in the monthly titled Nyugat (West) in 1921 about the artist, who had returned from France not long before. The new way could have been concluded from Szobotka’s painterly character. “I was dealing more and more with the problem of being understandable and tried to eliminate from my pictures the elements that could be called the argot of Cubism. - Thus I was approaching a kind of naturalism where the purpose of the picture almost lost in the enthusiastic enjoyment of the beauties of nature.” The countryside of Zebegény, Lake Balaton and Szentendre were suitable for the purpose perfectly. Moreover, he found his spiritual company among the artists of Gresham circle (István Szőnyi, Aurél Bernáth, Róbert Berény, József Egry) in the most natural way. The first time that he together with his family had travelled to Zebegény was in the summer of 1927. They rented a flat and from that time on until the war, spent nearly all the summers there. Imre Szobotka usually set his easel between the banks of the brook. His favourite motifs were the characteristic streets of Zebegény, the diversified scenery of the Danube Bend, the village people and the events of everyday life. Posterity found several explanations for the complete change of his art. Iván Hevesy realized that the Cubistic way of seeing attained in Paris was inadequate to Szobotka’s painterly character. He could hardly hide his colourism and his admiration for nature. When he arrived in Paris in 1911, the sensation was the Salon des Indépendants exhibition, where he could immediately get acquainted with the art of Cubists. Picasso, Braque and Derain, IMRE SZOBOTKA 1 8 9 0 - 1 9 6 1 Mélyút, 1940 к.
