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
works, failed to cross the boundaries of Impressionism and PostImpressionism, and revealed the stylistic marks of the new tendency only in traces. The portrait that Czóbel painted of Jenő Maticska (cca. 1904), a colleague who died prematurely in 1906, still followed the Nagybánya traditions through and through. The portrait that shows an Old Lady from Bruges in profile (1905, Fig. 7) is available only in the form of a black-and-white reproduction, which appeared in the catalogue of a retrospective memorial exhibition, published on the occasion of opening the Czóbel Museum in Szentendre. 23 The portrait of a little girl (location unknown) could also have been completed in 1905; its reproduction was left out of the various Czóbel monographs. 24 (Fig. 10) Despite their shortcomings, the photos clearly reveal that in 1905 Czóbel still remained close to his Nagybánya roots, although his Paris experiences already proved helpful to get his bearings in the jungle of stylistic tendencies there. In the course of his "search" for style, he, too, climbed through all the stages, from Impressionism to Post and Neo-lmpressionism, as did Matisse and his friends, but at that point he still stopped short of the borderline between the earlier tendencies and Fauvism. The same applies to one of his best-known portraits from 1905, Little Girl in Front of a Bed. (Fig. 11, Cat. No. 102) Was the Neo Movement Really Inspired by Czóbel's Fauvist Compositions? According to another legend, in the summer of 1906 Czóbel "showed to his friends the Fauvist compositions he had made in Paris, literally sparking off a revolution among them." 25 In art historical literature the view (based on a comment of István Genthon's) quickly spread that Czóbel had brought Fauvist paintings back from Paris. 26 Although Genthon named István Réti as his source, Réti in fact made no mention of Fauvism or the Fauve style in his memoirs. What he did write, however, was that "one could see these types of compositions already in the first half of the 1890s in the Salon des Indépendants of Paris." 27 In describing the dozen or so paintings Czobel had brought home, Réti mentioned stylistic marks that were more characteristic of PostImpressionism, adding that "the compulsive elements of a naturalistic approach conditioned by the study of nature were still not eradicated by stylization." 28 Since most of Czóbel's early paintings disappeared, it is now impossible to reconstruct his mini-exhibition consisting of a dozen or so compositions that sparked off a revolution. Nevertheless, it seems rather odd that nobody has ever made an attempt at it.
