Czobel Bela 1925 Kávéházban 1925

Curator: Bela Czobel’s “Czobel Bela 1925 Kávéházban,” created in 1925, depicts two figures in what appears to be a coffee house. The piece is primarily rendered in pencil on paper. I find it immediately striking how rudimentary, even incomplete it feels. Almost ephemeral, like a fading memory sketched quickly before it vanished. Editor: Ephemeral is a great word for it! It's the pencil, isn't it? So accessible, such an everyday material used to capture, essentially, an everyday scene. Two people meet at a café—a truly modern scenario—and this ordinary tool becomes the medium to preserve it. Were artists making social commentaries simply by the way that they worked, and the mediums that they favored? Curator: Possibly. Pencil allows for corrections and revisions, revealing process as a type of artifact... But I'm struck by more than the physical marks, and what could have easily been obscured had Czobel worked with a different medium, which is key, and which transcends its social circumstances. The negative space between the figures, the way they don’t quite connect... the artist renders a specific sense of detached observation, wouldn't you say? It is melancholy but there's an honesty too. It’s refreshing. Editor: Honesty and a specific level of material access. Considering the pencil: we find it in classrooms and boardrooms, construction sites, even in the domestic sphere. There's little to no processing necessary from natural resources to artwork. Here we are confronted with unpretentious observation through uncomplicated means. Curator: So interesting that you highlight unpretentious observation… Because ultimately I come back to feeling something mysterious—even soulful—about Czobel's marks. Editor: Yes, and I believe that tension of material and emotion, process and spirit is part of its enduring appeal. Curator: I agree. It makes you wonder how many sketches and gestures like this existed—that perhaps remain invisible in the background to this day! Editor: Perhaps countless! Let’s see if we can uncover them, shall we?