Czóbel Béla Girl in Pink 1974 1974

Bela Czobel made Girl in Pink in 1974 with oil paint. The colours are bright, but also somehow muted, like colours seen through a screen. I can really feel the energy in the way Czobel applies the paint, almost scrubbing it onto the surface to build up the image. Look closely at the girl’s hands, see how they’re rendered in these ochre yellows and browns, with just a few strokes to suggest form. The hands are almost like a separate painting within the painting. It reminds me of the way Bonnard used colour and loose brushwork to create these very intimate, domestic scenes. But Czobel’s got something else going on here too, a kind of raw intensity, a feeling that the painting is actively being made right in front of your eyes. For me, the real magic of painting is that it’s never really finished. It’s always open to new interpretations.