Czóbel Béla Vörös Sapkás Férfi 1922 1922

Bela Czobel made this painting, "Red Capped Man" around 1922, and it looks like he’s used oil paint. There’s something so appealing about the way the paint seems to have been thrown on quickly and with a lot of confidence. What I really like is the surface of the painting. It looks like a mosaic of all these little blocks of colour. The red in the cap kind of bleeds down into the beard, and then you see that same red pop up in the background. Then look at the hands resting on that cane, they're like a bunch of little teeth. He’s not trying to trick us with realism, but wants us to see how he's made it. There's something very human about that to me, you can feel the process and the struggle right there on the canvas. Czobel reminds me a little bit of someone like Kirchner, with that same kind of intensity, but maybe with a touch more tenderness. Ultimately, painting is about exploring what it means to be human, and Czobel certainly makes me feel something, even if I can't quite put my finger on it.