Czóbel Béla Ut 1919 1919

Béla Czóbel made this landscape in 1919 using brushstrokes that are bold but also kind of tentative. The colours, they are all muted, except for these random pops of intense blue. Looking at how the paint’s been applied so directly, I start to wonder what Czóbel was thinking. Did he want to capture a real place, or was he more interested in messing around with what paint can do? I can almost see him squinting at the scene, then quickly smearing on the paint, not really caring if it looks exactly right. The way the road curves and disappears, and how those houses are just hanging out in the background… it reminds me of other expressionist painters. It’s like they’re all chatting to each other across time, each trying to figure out how to make the world make sense on canvas. What does it all mean? Who knows! And maybe that’s the point. Maybe Czóbel just wanted to give us a glimpse of how he saw the world, without trying to explain everything.