Béla Czóbel, In the Room 

This is a drawing titled ‘In the Room’ by Béla Czóbel. The solitary figure, seen from behind, resonates with the age-old motif of the Rückenfigur, a figure seen from the back, contemplating a scene before them. This motif has appeared in art for centuries, perhaps most famously in Caspar David Friedrich's landscapes. Here, though, the landscape is replaced with what appears to be an interior, where a grid-like structure, perhaps a window, imprisons the sitter. The grid, an ancient symbol of order and control, evokes a sense of entrapment when imposed on our view onto the world. Think of the medieval 'Danube School' painter Albrecht Altdorfer, whose landscapes were so full of emotion that it was almost as if the trees themselves were running away into the distance. In Czóbel's work, this motif is not present, but a sense of isolation and emotional distance is. The room becomes an extension of the self. The figure seems to be bound to the chair and unable to be released from the constrains of the room. The composition evokes a profound sense of melancholy, inviting us to reflect on our own relationship to the spaces we inhabit.