Ambassador of Hungarian Painting
Béla Czóbel exhibition at the ArtMill, Szentendre
MúzeumCafé 40.
It is not at all difficult to regard Czóbel Béla as one of the greatest artists of modern Hungarian painting. From almost the beginning of his career he played a recognised role in the development of Hungarian art. Yet since his last retrospective, held in the Budapest Kunsthalle in 1971, generations have grown up without having been able to view his fascinating oeuvre as a whole. Works by Czóbel have featured in publications and exhibitions of various magnitudes, as well as in prestigious shows abroad, but a major retrospective of his oeuvre has had to wait for 43 years. The Ferenczy Museum has taken on this task. It is preparing to stage a major exhibition presenting more than 200 works by the artist in Szentendre’s Art-Mill in May this year. Given the incredible richness of the oeuvre, the curators Mimi Kratochwill, Emőke Bodonyi, László Jurecskó and myself, are continuously strugg-ling with selecting, having to reject some items on a par with those to be exhibited. Seeing the last large-scale retrospective, which took place during his lifetime, Czóbel remarked: “Well, most of my pictures are not shown, I miss them a lot. I have painted at least more than a thousand works and this is only a negligible part. Most of them have been lost or ruined, or I haven’t found them. Hardly any of my paintings are in Hungary.” If it is added that the collection of the Czóbel Museum alone holds several thousand works of graphic art, it becomes clear that his oeuvre is among the most significant, not only regarding quality but also quantity. Besides Czóbel’s paintings and works of graphic art, the exhibition opening in May will showcase a large number of photographs and written documents connected to his oeuvre, and the curators are hoping that people who have other documents will come forward to assist with academic research.