Still-life in Yellow 1960

Hungarian artist Bela Czobel’s ‘Still-life in Yellow’ vibrates with colour, like the hazy memory of a summer afternoon. I can imagine Czobel building up the surface with layers of buttery pigment. See how the yellows and oranges glow, each brushstroke alive with movement and light. The paint feels thick, luscious, like he's wrestling with the very substance of the world. Look at the circular forms – maybe they’re fruit in a bowl, but they seem to float and dissolve into the background. I wonder what Czobel was thinking when he made this? Maybe he was trying to capture the feeling of abundance, of warmth. The way the colours seem to push and pull against each other, reminding me of the Fauvist paintings of Matisse and Derain, but with a uniquely personal inflection. It’s like he’s having a conversation with them, across time and space. Painting is this ongoing dialogue, isn't it? We all borrow, steal, and transform, always trying to find our own way of seeing, our own way of feeling.