Czobel Béla Drawing 1956 1956

Bela Czobel made this drawing of a thoughtful figure in 1956, we can see the graphite smudged into the paper. It feels like he’s trying to catch a fleeting moment, a gesture before it disappears. The texture is soft, almost like velvet, but with these sharp, decisive lines cutting through. Look at the way he's rendered the hand against the face – it's not about perfect realism, but about capturing the weight and the angle. The graphite looks like it's been applied in layers, built up from a whisper to a shout. There’s a kind of vulnerability in that smudginess, like the artist is unafraid to leave his fingerprints on the work, to show the process. Czobel reminds me of Käthe Kollwitz, both artists have a similar way of digging into the emotional life of their subjects through the materiality of their drawings. Art isn't about answers, it's about the ongoing conversation, the questions we ask and the marks we leave behind.