Biography

Béla Czóbel was born in 1883 in Budapest. Between 1902 and 1906 he was a pupil of Bela Ivanyi-Grunwald in Nagybánya (Romania). In 1902 and in 1903 he studied at the Academy of Munich, and from 1903 he studied at the Julian Academy in Paris. He first exhibited in 1905 at the Autumn Salon (Salon d’Automne), from 1906 he appeared together with the French Fauves in the same place, and in the Independents Salon (Salon des Indépendants). In March 1908 a solo exhibition opened at Berthe Weill Gallery. His friends included the famous Dunoyer de Segonzac, Georges Braque and Amedeo Modigliani. During the First World War (1914-1918) he had to escape from France, and he settled in Bergen in the Netherlands. Between 1919 and 1925 he lived in Berlin, where he joined the Brücke group, than he became the member of the Freie Sezession. In 1925 he had a collective exhibition in Berlin, but even in the same year he moved back to France. In 1927 he had a successful exhibition of the Brummer Gallery in New York. From 1931 he often came home, he regularly spent his summers in the castle Hatvani for the painter Francis Hatvany invitation. In 1933 he won the grand prize of the Pál Színyei Merse Society. In 1940 he returned permanently to Hungary and he settled in Szentendre (city in Central Hungary). After the Second World War he regularly exhibited in abroad, firstly in Paris, in the Galerie Zak. Still in his life in 1975 a museum opened in Szentendre, which is bearing his name.

Following the naturalism of Nagybánya, Czóbel very quickly - essentially the same time as the birth of movement – he joined the Fauvism, which was the latest trend in Paris. His choice of topic was very rich and also traditional; he painted self-portraits, portraits, nudes, landscapes, city-partial, interiors and still-lives, his approach was modern, (Post-Impressionism, Fauves, German Expressionism, Cubism, School of Paris), which raises him to the forefront of the Euro-Atlantic culture.