Czóbel Béla Brügge 1905 1905

Béla Czóbel laid down these thick strokes of oil paint to depict a canal in Brügge sometime around 1905. Imagine him standing there, the light hitting the water, probably thinking about what the Fauves were up to back in France. The paint is really loaded on here, especially in the shadows, and you can see how he’s used these saturated colors to describe the scene, kind of pushing the boundaries of what color can do. I particularly like how he’s handled the buildings on the left, how the white and blue stripes lean diagonally—it's a gutsy move. It reminds me a bit of the way Van Gogh or even some of the German Expressionists used color and form to convey emotion. You can feel the energy and excitement of a painter who’s really engaging with the world around him, trying to capture something essential about the place. We feel his presence! It’s all part of the ongoing conversation that painters have, across time and space.