Passuth Krisztina – Szücs György – Gosztonyi Ferenc szerk.: Hungarian Fauves from Paris to Nagybánya 1904–1914 (A Magyar Nemzeti Galéria kiadványai 2006/1)

HUNGARIAN FAUVES CASE STUDIES - GERGELY BARKI: The Evolution of Czóbel's Fauvism in the Mirror of his Early Portraits

2. Béla Czóbel: A Street in Paris, 1905. Cat. No. 104. city clothes during painting that "on one occasion, behaving like a madman in front of the entire school, he attacked his own garment with a painting brush, splashing paint all over it: 'Damned elegance! [...] You will not hold me up in my work!'"

2 When the artist's fiery temper, his "wildness", became manifested in his works a few years later, that element obviously played a part in the Fauves' name-giver, Louis Vauxcelles' choice of words, when he described him as the uncouth Fauve.

3 But it was not just Vauxcelles who conferred the title "Fauve" on Czobel; when Michel Puy wrote his first essay about the Fauves as a group, which was entitled Les Fauves and was published in 1907, he mentioned Czóbel's name on several occasions.

4 The group's retrospective exhibition in 1927 put the final stamp of approval on Czóbel's status as a Fauve: the organizers included one of his bestknown Fauvist works (Painters Outdoors, 1906, Cat. No. 108) in the exhibition, describing him as a Fauve on the catalogue's cover.

5 In a letter written years later, Picasso told Czobel that he remembered the Hungarian artist's works exhibited in the Fauves' rooms in both the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Indépendants, voicing his dismay over Czóbel's omission from the Fauve group in those days (in the late 1950s).

6 Therefore, Czóbel's "Fauveness" requires no special explanation: his contemporaries accepted him as a Fauve, and his works corroborated this view. 4. The corner of rue Poinsot and rue Edgar Quinet today